By Ahmed
Jalali
We were university students and the
Moroccan Green March holiday arrived, and I did not like that my friend, the
American orientalist Erik, would remain alone in the university residence,
where despair and cats are the master of the place when students leave on
holidays
I invited him to accompany me to the countryside as a guest of my family in my native village Awlad Jalal. He did not hesitate, his eyes shone in preparation for discovering another part of Morocco where he came to study Arabic for six months.
We boarded the train in
cold, rainy weather, raining "cats and dogs" as the English proverb
goes. I put on my modest winter clothes and he wore his American gear suitable
for the rainy season..
We arrived in Kentia
city before sunset, from there we took a taxi to Sidi Allal Tazi village, and
we entered my family house at night under heavy rain.
At that time, there was
no phones, no WhatsApp, and none of these wonders that took people's hearts and
sights. We walked into the house, and the dog "Dogol " greeted us
with a bark that mixed welcome and skepticism, because he smelled a foreigner's
presence on his nostrils..
Before we entered the
house, Eric asked me how he should greet my father, may God have mercy on him,
and I told him to do as like me. I kissed my father's head and stood
respectfully.
My father asked me:
Where did you meet this young Christian? I told him he was my classmate, and
then we sat in the spacious guest room.
I saw in my father's
eyes apprehension and not a little bewilderment, as it was the first time he welcomed
a "Christian" in his home.
And because Eric was learning classical
Arabic, my father seemed to be happy and amazed to see a foreigner speaking our sacred classical Arabic
language, and he gladly poured for our special
couple of hot tea that only him had the secret to prepare, and Eric drank it in
one or two batches and returned the cup to my father with a thanking phrase:
Thank you sir, it's delicious..
My father never forgot that good and so polite young American.I think, just as Eric never forgot my father, and I still keep his sad message of condolence to me on his death.Eric s manners and behavior made him a very good embassador of the culture of his country
The following day we
walked around the village among the fields, and in the sugar cane spawn,
whenever Eric met a shepherd, greeted him and caressed his sheep. He was and
still is a true lover of nature and animals. He shared with me his dream of
establishing a model estate with planting and livestock, according to his
vision of an environmentally friendly economy and a healthy product.
That evening, we had a
fever that I had never experienced in my life. The symptoms of a certain COVID:
suffocation, terrible fever, sweating and partial absence of hearing and
vision. We were trembling under the blankets and I was afraid that my foreign
friend would die or be hurt for three reasons: he was a dear friend of mine, a
guest of my family and a guest of my country.
At breakfast, my mother,
may God have mercy on her, came to us with foods that are all spices, I do not
know where she kept them, and at lunch we also had a meal rich in mixtures, and
the same thing was repeated on the morning of the third day.
Erik had a still a light
fever but his voice improved to the point that he sang and danced in the Irish
way, then joked with the dog, addressing him in imitation of my father.
We completed the holiday
program by visiting Kentia, Rabat and Dar El Gaddari village, where we gathered
over a bowl of local couscous on the ground and did not leave a grain or a
piece of vegetables from it..
The days went by until
it was time to return to Tangier. But as soon as we arrived at the university campus,
the fever became worse than what it did to us in the village.
Our bodies were boiling
under the lid, our clothes were sweating, and whenever I changed them, they
were overwhelmed by sweat.
My classmates would go
to study in the morning and then come back in the evenings. Some of them would
knock at my room door but Erik would leave his room to come to my mine to check
on me when he was no less sick than me. He bought me fruits and medicine and
looked after me like a brother does or like what arm comrades do in a war front
line.
I don't know how he got
medicines that he gave me half of , and we started using them for a few days
until we could stand up again again after ten dark days of weakness and awful pains
When I went out into the
yard after a semi-medical quarantine, I was blurred and Eric was less energetic
than before. I felt as if I was recovering from a brutal torture I was
subjected to by unknown merciless enemies.
My American friend s face changed color a little bit, but he quickly regained strength due to his
Marines-like strong body. We came back to life and celebrated that in our way:
respecting our daily coffee time in Havana café.
Years passed and I
remember that incident with fever, breathing pains and physical weakness, and
when the last epidemic hit the world, I began to review what happened to Erik
and me in details.
I think that it was an old version of "Corona"
belonging to the twentieth century shared by two bodies, one African Moroccan
and the other one was American of Irish descent