Last summer, I spent three months living and studying in Morocco. The day before my departure, my dad gave me a 1980 Canon AE-1 and 35mm film as a birthday gift, since I would be spending my birthday in Morocco. I used my film camera to gather the wonderful pieces of that summer in fits and starts, along with the purple journal I bought for a few dirham outside the Medina Qadima, or Old City, where my homestay family lived.
At first, my photos were hesitant, and I strove to photograph scenes that I felt captured the ‘essence,’ whatever that is, of my day or the mood in Morocco at that time; I photographed a woman looking out to sea, a famous minaret in the city, and the view from the roof of the building where we took classes. As the summer wore on though, I began to take photos of things that represented my experience in Morocco—a woman shopping on the market street outside my house, a man carrying empty Ain Atlas water bottles (we were discouraged from drinking water from the tap and spent most of our pocket money on large plastic Ain Atlas or Sidi Ali water bottles), my friend Annika on the train ride from Marrakesh to Rabat, and a man I often saw in Rabat proper who sat on the sidewalk with a brown box on his lap.
All these scenes are personal in one way or another, and it was only toward the end of our trip that I began to migrate backwards to my initial instinct, revisiting familiar places and photographing them the way I saw them. You’ll see a photograph of the beach where we went swimming, photographed on a bright blue day when the beachgoers, bathing room construction site, and cemetery were visible all at once. There’s also a photo of the Kasbah taken in symmetry; the idea for the photo had occurred to me my first week in Morocco, but people continually crossed my viewfinder that day and obstructed the symmetry. I returned to the same spot at the end of the trip and took the photo as I had originally envisioned it. Finally, I took two photos of the horizon view from the roof of my homestay—I’d wanted to take those since the first time I climbed up there, but I only took them the last week of my stay. Why? I suppose I did not want to take a photo too early on in my adventure for fear that I would uncover something new about the same scene by the end of my stay and thus have failed to capture it in rushing to take the photo. I took these somewhat rehearsed photos my last week in Morocco, and they are slightly tilted or cut-off when I look at them now.
My style of journaling in Morocco evolved along with my photography. My notebook began with observational drawings and class notes. Early pages include my exact location, the date, comprehensive lecture notes, and a picture of something I could see from my desk in the classroom—an open window, the patterns on the floor tiles, the sconces on the walls, “blue iron panelling on exterior windows,” stained glass above the door. As time went on, my notes became more visual. My personality began to peek through the lines of my writing: I drew the face of a visiting architect and wrote down the composition of her outfit, which I admired. I copied slogans and designs from my classmates’ clothing and observations about the culture of the city.
About a month into my journal entries, the tone of my writing changes. I dissect my feelings, I dive into my anger, I write lists of complaints, I illustrate song lyrics, I jot down professional advice. As I read the notebook now, I can almost feel my growing need for control with every page I flip. What were expressions of anger and frustration become lists detailing how I ought to behave, what I am excited to do when I return home; funny quotations give way to quotes I saw on Pinterest on how to be. My handwriting is neater, my drawings more precise; instead of expressing my anger, I analyze it. Reading a diary entry dated sometime in late July, the words “inner child” jump out at me, as does my bitterness. My writing gets increasingly unoriginal as my entries pick up speed. Where the writing is interesting, it is mean.
As my “vulnerability” increasingly dominates my writing, it takes on a brittle patina, one that is remarkably shallow. It makes sense, though—in the midst of a progressively frustrating external environment, I turned inwards. Within the span of that summer, I went from feeling open and filled with excitement for exploration and possibility to more goal-oriented and narrow-minded. What saved my notebook from narcissism in the end was travel and creativity—stimulus to shock the system. Upon my return to Rabat from several independent trips (which I will write about in a later post), the fonts in my journal become stranger and my writing more abstract, my quotations kinder and more sympathetic.
The last entry in my notebook has only a few lines, dated a little less than a month away from one year ago today. In it, I record a question posed by a visiting foundation director in his lecture about translating an Arabic word into English: “That word speaks very well?” he asked. I jot down my own notes: “Does the word speak? Is it trying to say something? Does it say what you want it to say?” Finally, I return to the guest lecturer’s words: “The king is two things: A person, and the king.” I have no idea the context in which he said this, but the notion still stands. There is one page left blank in the notebook. Today I write this: “You are two things: A person, and yourself. Try not to focus too much on the latter. Only ask yourself, do you speak well?”
I hope you enjoy these photographs for what they are: Little pieces of light transposed onto highly impressionable paper.
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Thank you for sharing, Lovely. But I have a personal interest in what you DIDN'T like about the time there. I imagine it has something to do with your gender. Write about it sometime (or just to me!).