How Do You Solve a Problem Like…

This is what it’s like to audition for a choir in Casablanca.

First, you email the director, in impeccable French (or, should I say, infantile French that has been nicely elevated by your conveniently bilingual pal back in pleasantly predictable Canada). The director emails you back –eventually– in a casual French that lacks the standards of punctuation and capitalization to which you have grown accustomed in such exchanges. No matter. She is a native speaker. You will allow her this linguistic license.

The content of her message is, essentially, “call me, maybe.”

The second step in auditioning for a choir in Casablanca is a brief moment of panic. With some tweaking, you can read and write passably, but a phone call? Without the absolutely critical aid of gestures and apologetic glances? Non, merci. Je ne peux pas.

The third step is to respond by email with a sheepish “Parlez-vous anglais?” – to which you receive no response whatsoever.

Step 4: Enlist the aid of a kind-hearted French teacher on campus, who agrees to call on your behalf. Email the director in impeccable French to inform her of the upcoming phone call. Ask four specific (and, you think, reasonable) questions: Where and when do you practice? What is your repertoire this year? When is the first rehearsal? Are you accepting new members?

Step 5: Receive an invitation to audition via Anne, the kindly French teacher, and a follow-up email with an address, date and time. Nothing more. No information about rehearsals or repertoire. No indication of what type of building to look for, or what to do when you get there. No instructions to prepare anything of any sort. Just an address. Okay.

Step 6: Google maps. The address appears to be attached to a certain Eglise Anfa. This should be simple enough, given the sparsity of Christian edifices in a city studded with mosques. Locate said address on two separate street maps, and on Mona, your trusty GPS. Exclaim happily that the desired intersection is only a block away from the comfortingly named Rue Mozart. Think brave thoughts. “You can do this.”

Step 7: Practice. Not the music. The route. Sign out a school car at 7:00 on a Saturday morning and drive, without incident, to the target destination. Walk around a bit. Take photos of the intersection. Memorize the names of the stores. Walk up and down in front of the church, trying to deduce the whereabouts of the entrance behind the locked gates. Shrug. The appropriate entrance will be apparent when there is a choir director, or a chorister, or someone, to greet you. Peace.

Step 7.5: Get back in the car and get lost. Give hearty thanks for Mona, your trusty GPS, for rounding you about the correct series of roundabouts on your roundabout way home. Feel confident and accomplished. You can do this.

Step 8: Practice. The music. Not the route. Warm up your rusty singing voice all day long in between classes, in the serene privacy of your music room. Ascending and descending triads. Descending pentascales. Arpeggios. Scales. Everything. Again. Pull out a French Canadian folk song, just in case she asks you to sing something specific. Sing it in a few different keys, trying to find the sweet spot. Sing imperfectly, but passably. Rather like your French, only better.

Step 9: Chicken out on the driving aspect of the event. Maneuvering a motor vehicle through downtown Casablanca during rush hour is nothing like following the same solitary route at dawn on a Saturday morning. The taxi will be simpler. And you’ll get to practice your French on the driver.

Step 10: Review. The routes, and the music. Don appropriate clothing, twice. Leave your apartment an hour early. Catch a Grand Taxi right away. Inhale the body odour of six other passengers, who are as uncomfortable with your proximity as you are with theirs. Get out at the taxi station. Breathe. Catch a Petit Taxi almost right away. Count to ten in Arabic and win the driver’s heart. Discover he speaks more English than you speak French. Find out about his two children and his financial troubles. Surprise him by pointing out the desired intersection. Feel really smart. Give him an extra tip, “for Eid.” Exit the vehicle.

Step 11: Arrive at Eglise Anfa 20 minutes early.  Approach the gates, Von-Trapp-style:“We’re looking for Fräulein Maria.” Enter the building. Sit in on 5 minutes of French mass. Get bored. Go out and kill 10 minutes wandering through nearby shops. Make your way back to the church. Stand expectantly on the sidewalk. Wait.

Step 12: Pace. This is Morocco. Sometimes things don’t start on time. Just keep waiting. Someone will come soon to usher you in.

Step 13: Grow uneasy. Double check the address: 13 rue ain harrouda. Walk to a small side entrance just outside the gate. Read the sign, clearly marked “No. 13, Sœurs Franciscaines.” Try the door. Try more doors. Try every door you can see. All, except for the door to the French mass, are locked tight. You’re looking for Fräulein Maria. She is nowhere to be found.

Step 14: Search for 13 rue ain harrouda in Google Maps on your iPhone. Note that the little red pin is leading you to the other side of the roundabout. Feel foolish. Follow the pin. Arrive at a posh furniture store flanked by scary-looking guards. Walk back to the church. Try the doors. Pull out the map. Stand there, looking lost and forlorn.

Step 15: Notice that someone else appears to be doing what you are doing, but purposefully and with more confidence. Was that a Messiah score in her hand? Consider stopping her, but hesitate because of your horrid French. She disappears. Okay. What now?

Step 16: Recall that you have the choir director’s phone number in your email inbox. Dial this number, knowing full well you will not be able to communicate with whoever answers, which will likely be nobody, as the director is likely busy admitting other singers into her choir. A man answers. He speaks a bit of English. He understands what you are asking. He tells you to turn left and walk 50 metres, and you will see a big door with a guard, who will tell you where to go.

Step 17: Turn left and walk 50 metres. 50 metres across the roundabout, or 50 metres around the corner? How far is 50 metres, anyway? Surely not this far. Arrive at a big, locked door with no guards. Walk back to the church. Consider calling the number again. Decide that the gruff voice on the other end of the line likely has no more information than what he has already provided. Stand, forlorn, on the street, looking for Fräulein Maria.

Step 18: Turn right. Walk about five metres. See a guard at the entrance to a walled parking lot. The same parking lot that, on Saturday morning, you were told is not related in any way to the church. You got the impression it was private property. Very private. Do not go there, was the garbled message of the person you were quizzing. Private.

What the heck. Show the guard the address on your post-it note. Ask for Fräulein Maria. Watch him nod. A young couple with one motorcycle helmet to share between them is walking through the lot. “L’audition?” they ask, in the midst of a flurry of unintelligible sentences. “Oui,” you say weakly. You follow them.

Step 19: Wait. Sit on a chair and be nervous. For about an hour. Smile at the put-together woman with the Messiah score. Remain otherwise unacknowledged as the others chat quietly in amiable French. Stay rigidly silent. What were you thinking? Why are you here? How could you have thought your blustering Anglophone self would be welcome here? Listen as two singers intone a divine Panis Angelicus in the audition room. Listen as another singer performs a lusty showtune. Listen as everyone sings ascending and descending triads and arpeggios. Look at everyone’s carefully prepared scores. Look at your own empty hands.

Step 20: Be brave. Ask the put-together Messiah-bearer if she speaks English. Chat easily for a few minutes about Canada, Korea, and choirs. Exchange contact information. It would be fun to sit beside her in choir. You could be friends.

Step 21: Finally. Go into the audition room. Introduce yourself. Snap, crackle and pop your way through your French Canadian folk song and a few lines of a traditional spiritual. Sing them over and over and over and over, because your brain has popped and twenty years of choral repertoire has leaked away. “Un autre, un autre!” your inquisitor croons. But there are no autres, and your sweet spot has all but vanished. Poof.

The torment continues. Ascending and descending F major triads. You hate F. F is the precise location of your pesky passagio. Please, just start on C. But you must sing F major, and only F major, again and again and again. “Glissez, glissez!” the directrice demands emphatically. You’re so nervous, you tell her. She dismisses your comment with a flamboyant wave. “Chantez, pas parlez” she chastises. Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah. Do-mi-so-mi-do. Snap-crackle-pop-crackle-snap. Groan.

In somewhat comprehensible French, she waves you out of the room, communicating (you think) that she will talk to your kindly friend, Anne, about you, because she’d rather not talk to you directly. Au revoir.

Step 22: Hail a red taxi. Say “Hay Hassani,” once, and then several more times, like a desperate incantation. You know Hay Hassani is a real destination. Why is the driver so confused? What is he saying in his guttural Arabic? The English-speaking folks in the back seat translate for you. He will drop them off first, and then take you. Okay. In you go, for a ride who-knows-where. As you ride, you text your kindly friend, Anne, who is appropriately sympathetic. But you should have kept your eyes on the road. You are suddenly feeling nauseous.

The kind English-speakers in the back seat exit the vehicle. The driver asks you, “Ou?” Hay Hassani. “Ou?” Grand Taxi. “Ou?” Route D’Azemmour. “Ou?” George Washington Academy. “Oh.” Okay. He chats with you along the way. He knows a bit of Italian. You exchange the usual French welcomes and thank-yous. You still feel sick. It’s dark. You don’t know where you are.

Step 23: Arrive at the taxi station. Fumble in your purse for the appropriate coins. Hand them to the driver with shaking hands. “Oh, tu pleurs!” he exclaims, with genuine alarm. “Pourquoi?”

“C’est un jour difficile pour moi,” you sputter. He takes your arm and shepherds you skillfully across the teeming street. He finds a Grand Taxi driver to take you to George Washington Academy. He argues with the taxi driver for a long time, then tells you it’s okay, go with this man. The Grand Taxi driver shows you 100 dirhams. This is what he is charging for a 5 dirham ride. You look at him stupidly, pleading “No….” and then give up. 100 dirhams is a small price to pay to get out of this mess and go home. You cry the whole way.

The call to prayer is sounding as you trudge up the hill to your apartment. It does not sound exotic, or mesmerizing, or musical. It sounds menacing. Your nausea worsens.

You enter your apartment, and think, “finally, I’m home.” But you’re not home. Your home in predictable Peterborough is owned by someone else now, who is systematically butchering your beautiful, beautiful gardens. Your choir is singing its songs without you, in five easy steps: Enter car. Drive five minutes to rehearsal. Be welcomed. Sing. Drive home.

And you, rather than proclaiming loudly your unique accomplishment of joining a French choir, are left humiliated and exhausted. You have botched the opportunity to find a choral community, in a city that has called you from across the world to teach its children to sing. You have been telling your colleagues about this choir for weeks. You even told your second taxi driver about the choir. You, Miss Regehr, are a failure.

You go to work the next day. Your children misbehave. You cannot lead your fledgling choir. You dismiss them in tears — these, your very first Moroccan tears, so aptly described in the song you unwittingly chose to sing for the dismissive Fräulein Maria:

Un Canadien errant, banni des ses foyers,

Parcourait en pleurant des pays etrangers.

(Once a Canadian lad, exiled from hearth and home,

Wandered, alone and sad, through alien lands unknown.)

~Epilogue~

All afternoon, children approach you with hugs and cards and apologies for their behaviour.

Your colleagues support you in every way imaginable.

You teach a bunch of six-year-olds the difference between beat and rhythm, and they get it. Easily. Compliantly. Joyfully.

You tell your French tutor your sad tale, in French, and she offers you some hope, and an emergency hotline to her driver.

You discover the delectable combination of msemmen and Nutella.

You connect with another wandering soul; you talk, laugh, eat, and make plans to go buy a lamp.

You still feel teary. The dreaded culture shock has set in. But you will be okay. You have people around you who care for you. You have people at home (your other home), who love you. You have a choir waiting with open arms – a choir that knows and appreciates your worth. And you, at your core, know your worth as well.

Parting advice? Skip the 23-step audition process. Find the people who feed your soul, and flee the ones who don’t. When you reflect on your day, think about the kind-hearted taxi drivers rather than the insensitive Europeans. Think about the children whose eyes lit up when they saw you as they stepped off the bus, and the little rhythms ticking away in their heads as they left your classroom so happily. Think about nighttime slumber, and a fresh start in the morning, and give yourself some grace.  Some problems, you see, are better left unsolved.