TRANSITION
A month ago, the day before I left for Morocco I was all packed and had nothing left to do. I had an empty day and suddenly had no motivation to do anything at all. You’d think that before a trip I would have a number of things that I needed to do or wanted to do. But the problem, I realized at the time was that, in my mind I was no longer here, I had already let go and it seemed pointless to be engaged in anything here at home.
Then a few days ago, my last day in Fes, the same thing happened. Susie went out for some final shopping and I stayed in our Airbnb and didn’t feel like doing anything. This was my last chance to explore Morocco and suddenly I had lost interest in Morocco. Something in me had already let go and I wasn’t there any more. I was already preparing to be home again.
There is some thing within me, that prepares for transition by letting go and shifting to the future. It isn’t a conscious choice.
Something unconscious part of me is always looking ahead and preparing for the future. When it is my turn to die, which will happen one of these days, the same thing will happen. I will be looking ahead, preparing for the transition, even if there is nothing ahead to transition to. But whatever is pushing along within me can’t imagine a futureless future. That is why it seems there must be life after death. It is built into us. When a time of transition happens something in us lets go of where we are and prepares for what is to come. That is why each cross cultural transition is, for me, a little death.
My last full day in Fes I could feel myself letting go. I didn’t feel like shopping, I didn’t feel like writing, I didn’t feel like doing anything. Even though I was still in Morocco I was letting go of Morocco and preparing to be in Swannanoa again. This has happened again and again in my life when traveling. When you have been having a great time somewhere and the day comes when you are scheduled to leave, it suddenly feels that is time to go. You have been letting go slowly for days and have finally completely let go. If your flight is cancelled or it is impossible to travel and you are given an extra three days it is almost impossible to become engaged again.
You are ready to go, and irritated if held up. When I try to understand the peacefulness with which people I care about have accepted death I realize that they have let go, of the world, of me, of everything. They are ready to go and don’t want another three days. It seems clear to me, anyway, still attached to this world, that they are not going anywhere, that they are going into oblivion, into emptiness. They won’t be in heaven or be reborn again or even hang around to haunt people, they will be gone. But that is not how it feels to the person who is dying. Something in the person who is dying carries them along and prepares for an unknown future and lets go of the present and the past. All of their concentration is going into this transition.
But of course that isn’t the way it is for the person who is left behind. For the person left behind the presence of the person who has died is even more palpable and present than it was when I was taking them for granted. There is a huge emptiness. The person you love is still very much here, even though you know they are not. They almost haunt you even though you know they are gone and can’t. The more you are aware that they are not here the more intense their presence is, the more they are here. While for them the closer they are to not being here the more unreal being here is. They are moving on. They are letting go, waving at you as they pass out the door.
So that is what it was like for me to leave Morocco. And when the transition did come in a 25 hour stretch between waking up in Casablanca early to catch the flight at Mohammed VI Airport to being dropped by an Uber ride at my front door and going to bed, it was a strange passage. I felt like the space travelers in Star Wars where all kinds of odd creatures were mingling in a strange galactic way station.
For me the transition from Morocco was gradual. First we were sitting in a plane half full of Moroccans returning to Canada where they now lived, the woman next to me drinking wine in the plane that would not have been acceptable in Morocco, as she transitioned back home. All of the announcements on the plane were made in French, Arabic and English. In Montreal airport all the announcements were made in French and English and finally in Newark everything was in English again. In Montreal a passerby persuaded me to order a mixture of French fries and a thick red sauce spread over them, a local specialty, but while it was Moroccan supper time for me it was on 3 in the afternoon in Montreal and the cardiac arresting dish wasn’t ready yet so I had to settle for cold sushi. When we got to Newark I ordered a gigantic hamburger, thick and larger than the bun, almost $30 with tax and the tip (without asking me) included.
I didn’t order from a person. I scanned the menu to my iPhone, clicked on my choice of credit card and paid instantly on line with no human contact. Very loud music throbbed around me and the whole experience was, for me, surreal. I was reminded that my greatest culture shock has always been when returning to the USA and fitting back into American culture which suddenly seems strange and artificial. In Newark I wasn’t able to fit in. But now, sitting at my silent dining table, a day later, I am beginning slowly to get my bearings.
But I still have the odd feeling that my experience of the transition I’ve been through feels very much as impending death must feel and soon will feel. I am not really back home, I’m not in heaven either, I am in a strange place, a kind of limbo way station, as unreal for a little while as Morocco was before I left there, and I feel that for a day or two this place will feel as much an odd place that I’ve been dropped into as Morocco with the call to prayer sounding in the mosque above me was last week, here a place that I was dropped into by birth and nationality and just as much a man made artificial reality as Morocco seems with its long robes and head scarves and donkey carts and harira bean soup.
This is the place where I will wait for the final transition when it will be my turn to wave with a smile on my face as I slide out the door.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 