By Abdelmoula Elkhdar
By Abdelmoula Elkhdar
Morocco World News
Khouribga, Morocco, January 7, 2012
It’s ten fifty-five p.m. I am by myself sitting on this white plastic chair, listening to a local silly radio station, and pondering over cloudy horizons. I am endeavoring to escape my loneliness, but I’m trapped in this cold room with only dim lights. The shadows of my small body, reflected across the light-red painted walls, are telling a strong story that I can’t figure out.
I started unconsciously writing with my body on the big red board. Shapeless shadowy creatures showed up briskly and intruded into my private space. They were dancing nonstop; slowly but insanely. With the exotic music stemming from the tiny speakers of the old dusty radio, movements of the unwanted guest creatures and voices coming from outside the room, the scene was growing even purely magical and mythical. Conversing with a self- reflection on zigzagged walls moved the sleeping crystal-clear muse in me. ‘She’, herself, started dancing!
The room was getting small and my weary body was growing big. I was no longer alone in this battle. Everything was on the move. It was like a second rush-hour life taking place on the outskirts of madness!
Mind-boggled as I was, flashes of incubated memories arose so clearly and the past was resurrected on that full-moon night. I flipped my history book, page by page and chapter by chapter, looking for any glorious souvenirs or any heroic accomplishments. But, to my dismay, I could only hear the pathetical grueling cries of a young urchin struggling to cycle against the sharp biting wind to reach school on time. The boy was not alone in his six-year journey to get a high school degree from a remote village, but he was the only underprivileged among his peers. His dirt-and-gravel road friends were all stronger than him, but he was the most intelligent of all.
A mint-tea pot with beautifully decorated glasses was sitting proudly on the green square tray on my three-legged table. The spout of the dome-shaped pot was releasing inner thoughts into the air of my cold room giving me the temporary warmth I was praying for that night. I was intoxicated by the aroma of the green mint that my father had planted himself in his olive-tree yard. A cone-shaped glass was sending irresistible invitations. There was a golden flower chiseled on it, but the blue striped circles were holding the flower in captivity. The whole scene makes one travel back in history and see the charming Chahrzad drinking from the same glass while telling luring stories to the cold-blooded king, Chahrayar, preventing him from killing more innocent women on his majestic bed.
The power of the hot drink could lift one even higher to the fringe of the sublime. Larbi Batma was singing coincidentally “Essiniya”, the tray, backing up the mysterious scene .The tray he was singing about was the tea-tray which was symbolic of the nineteen sixties and seventies in the country. Moroccans solved quite lot of their problems through gathering around a cup of tea in the old brass “Essiniya”. Hot tea is a magical wand for the many earthly headaches it heals.
The square clock on my brown bookshelf never stopped ticking and I was kind of used to its rattling music. The more minutes it ate up, the more beautiful my night grew and the more concerned I became of the time left for me to breathe the night’s air, full of silence and peace.
The picture of the chrysanthemums that mushroom behind its shiny glass was undecipherable. It seemed that the tiny hands, with a mighty power, were giving me an undesirable free lift to an unwanted direction; the graveyard? I wish I could stop the merciless time and enjoy the quietness. But my hot tea went cold and my night became so dark. The moon sunk into the clouds. My small TV went black and white. Hens were singing the morning song. The muezzin was calling lazy people like me for prayer. Another life was born; Good morning Morocco.
Edited by Benjamin Villanti
Abdelmoula Elkhdar is a Morocco World News’ Contributor
© Morocco World News
