SUNDAY EVENING ON THE SQUARE
It is a little hard to believe. I have been in Essaouira for a little over a week and have been mute the whole time except on Facetime with my son and daughter in Asheville, which seems right next door. I have only run into one person who speaks English, the very friendly woman running L’Atelier, an upscale coffee shop with good wifi. French and Arabic are the two languages I hear snatches of, although there are visitors here from all around the Mediterranean because it is a cheap $100 round trip on Ryan Air from much of Europe.
I feel comfortable walking down the narrow streets rimmed with colorful shops, unnoticed among the tourists. But I feel even more comfortable sitting in a central square at a table in an outdoor cafe that serves bowls of bean soup and a moist flatbread that I have still to learn the name of. On Sunday afternoons as the sun is setting the large square between the walls of the Medina, the fort with narrow lanes where I am staying, and the sea wall looking out across the Atlantic to Myrtle Beach, out of sight across the ocean, fills up with people out for a stroll on a Sunday afternoon.
The square is general bedlam. Parents come to sit and eat soup and bread while their children race around the square. In front of me boys are kicking a soccer ball against a wooden gate as a goal with people strolling through the middle of the game, hardly paying attention to the balls whizzing by and thudding against the door. Kids on roller skates snake through the strolling crowd along with electric scooters and bicycles and sellers of balloons and cigarette vendors, as families push strollers across the square. Across the square comes amplified music as a band plays and a male singer sings in Arabic.
Many of the women wear ankle length black or multi covered loose coverings that make their bodies shapeless, with almost all wearing a hijab head covering. Many men wear long loose cotton coats as well, often with a pointed hood. But younger people and tourists seem more hip, some wearing very skimpy clothing with no one seeming to notice. A boy who is perhaps autistic wanders through the cafe, bellowing, and is escorted out and wanders around the square. Along the painted sea wall people look out at the ocean as the sun sets. Above the sky is full of seagulls wheeling around. Everyone seems completely relaxed and casual and friendly in the hubbub. One thing that I have noticed, in the street and here, is that Morrocoans are a boisterous bunch, talking loudly, gesturing broadly, laughing a whole lot and full of expression, not at all Northern European. Across the way someone is demonstrating some kind of fire dance, holding flames in outstretched arms and swinging around with a crowd gathered around.
And suddenly as I sit here, feeling completely at ease and not out of place at all, not even feeling like a foreigner even though I can’t understand a word, it occurs to me that I am not in Swannanoa anymore and that if this square could be transported to Pack Square in the center of Asheville, it would create quite a stir. But here it feels completely normal. And I’ve only been here a week.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 