Sound

Noise, from the first groan in the morning to the last snore at night, is 100% constant in my Moroccan household, which I share with MANY many family members.

They are as follows:

Siham (mother)

Abdulmalak (father)

Sultana (14 year old daughter)

Aziza (13 year old daughter)

Khadija (7 year old daughter)

Moulay Driss (3 year old son)

Kamal (Siham’s 22 year old brother)

Hassan (Siham’s 32 year old brother)

Said (Siham’s 39 year old brother)

Simo (Siham’s 40 something year old brother)

“Habiba” (Siham’s mother)

Abdultaif (Siham’s father)

That’s right: with me, there’s 13 of us. And yes, there’s just one bathroom.

I am the only one with my own bed and my own room (a requirement of my school for host family placements, hamdo l’allah – “thanks to God”). The rest of the 12 family members sleep on couches in 2 adjacent living rooms. It’s basically one giant slumber party all the time, for better or for worse.

Some people may know I’m not huge on alone time when I’m at home, in my element. I like being alone for an hour, at maximum, then feel like I’m missing out on something and get antsy. However, here, I am being fed constant company and ‘togetherness’ with a fire hose.

Minaret of one of many mosques I can hear from my room

Sounds in my house range from Moulay’s screaming to the 5 times daily muezzin call from one of the 300 mosques in the old medina, from teenage gossip (probably often about me) to heated exchange between adults (dare I call it arguing?), and from Khadija’s questions (‘Ayn tadhaby? – where are you going?’) to the sound of water constantly dripping and running from somewhere to somewhere else.

One constant sound from day to day is the blaring television, which is usually playing Egyptian soap operas (dubbed in Darrija, the local Arabic dialect) or foreign films (often in Hindi with Arabic subtitles). We occasionally watch Arabic news, such as al-Jazeera. Whenever English comes on the tv, it’s immediately switched off. I understand about 1% of the words I hear on tv, which I figure is loads better than nothing at all. On the eve of a recent national holiday, La Marche Verte, there was a televised address from the king, Mohammad VI. After standing for the national anthem, he sat on his throne with his son to his right and his brother to his left and, to my surprise, read his speech and didn’t look up once. I don’t necessarily have an opinion on this king as I know too little about him to form one just yet, but I was not impressed.

One of many donkeys in the old Medina

Street life has another set of sounds all its own, and the varieties are endless: from calls of ‘ballakh’ (watch out) from the donkey drivers to horns signaling the arrival of a scooter or motorcycle in the too narrow streets, from the flop of a flat soccer ball being kicked by kids in a narrow alley to the ‘Bonjour – madame – you American?’ of the shopkeepers and hustlers as I pass by, from the loud and festive music of a wedding party to the kissing sound as bises are shared by friends, and from the crying of stray cats fighting to their deaths over scraps of meat to the ‘yalla’ (let’s go) of a father to his kids in the souk.

Wedding festivities of a neighboring family

There are an infinite number of other sounds, both foreign and familiar, I notice on a daily basis, and they all come together to forum the chorus that is life in this city. Though jarring and harassing and overwhelming at times, these sounds are what make this city so alive. Silence has no place here.