Where JourneyistheDestination Becomes a Bride of ISIS, Casablanca March 7, 1995

Henna Hands Held Hostage

Yeah, I knew that would get your attention. I am also curious to see how long it will take my friends in the State Department to come knocking, I mean a blog coming from a female of ARAB descent in Brooklyn and not just anywhere in Brooklyn, but BAY RIDGE which has about 3 mosques in a 2 block radius of this locale (actually just noticed walking the dog at 6 am that one is closed due to flooding), not to mention all the halal markets, butchers and restaurants, more women in full hijab than not and then pops up BRIDE + ISIS. My name is a fairly well known Lebanese Christian name and I have never actually set foot in Lebanon, Syria or Iraq or Turkey, but that's not important.... It's soooooo suspicious. But seriously, look at that photo, could I have looked more unhappy? Bride of ISIS was seriously the first thing that came to mind as I was mining my Morocco photo trove and I never would have included it if I hadn't thought of that clever caption.

First of all, I am so vain that I probably think this blog is about me and that picture of me is just horrendous, but if I can put the whole wardrobing thing out there in the blogosphere, I can do this. Look at how smooth my skin was 20 years ago.

This picture was taken in Casablanca, where I started this trip. The photo was actually done the day before I flew out of Casablanca to Cairo, but let's go back to the beginning: One reason I started out in Casablanca was that it was on the way to enlightenment in India and since I was going to take the time and money to check out, I was gonna do it right and stop at other places along the way. Since it’s all about the journey, you don’t just want to get airlifted in and out from under the Bodhi tree or Shangri-La or where ever you're supposed to find it. Second, I definitely did not want to start in London or some other traveler's check-sucking European city, even though they make great jumping off places for the rest of the world: Africa, the Middle East, Asia even. Finally, we had a family friend who was living in Casa, as they call it, working for the US govt. and he was all about helping me get launched on this venture, so I actually started out this budget jaunt in style. A US AID driver picked me (and my pack, which was like another person), up from the airport bright and early Valentine's Day 1995, and I was off.

I stayed with JS for a few days before setting off for Rabat and then Marrakech. Having JS to guide me, offer me a really nice room, driver and then company in the evenings to just do stuff like eat out or walk the Corniche, things I never would have done alone (at night, I mean), explain customs, was a fantastic way to ease into this whole thing.  Because of his position and personality, he had friends and contacts all over the country; one family  graciously hosted me and showed me around Marrakech and their ancestoral village where they had this ramshakle house in the Middle Atlas and made me feel like family. The drawback is that of course when you are a guest of someone, you abide by their customs and rules and in Morocco, women do not go out alone, they do not travel alone, they do not get on buses alone to strange other places.  It always (here and in other places)  took a huge effort to be like thanks for having me, now take me to the bus depot, I am off to XYZ place.  But those experiences and people and their generosity have stayed with me.

Still, no matter how hard you try to be open to customs, there are always these lost in translation moments, where you're just like what the hell am I doing here and Bride of Isis was one such example. So, I arrived in Casa during Ramadan, which is the worst time ever to travel in a Muslim country.  No eating or drinking during the day, shops and business kind of shut down and people are either sleeping or crabby or just can't be bothered. Having grown up in Saudi Arabia, I was an old hand at dealing with Ramadan, but getting closer to the point, during Ramadan or maybe towards the end, I don't really remember, all the women get their hands and feet henna tatooed. It looks so cool, and I had to have it.  After all, no Corporate America in the morning, so why not? I would later go on to have my nose pierced in Varanasi with a safety pin by a fortune teller and go three months without using shampoo, just for the hell of it.

So, the day before I left Morocco (it was still Ramadan) I arranged with one of the girls I had met through JS to go to someone's sister's cousin's house and get hennad up.  The whole process takes hours and hours and it was Ramadan, right, so no eating no drinking during the day, which always made me headachy and crabby. Anyway when the henna had dried three or four hours later, and I was like cool, thanks, how much do I owe you...we had already negotiated a price...out of nowhere come these other younger girls dragging in a trunk full of these robes and costume jewelry and crowns and shit and they start dressing me up like a bride and I am like, no, thank you, this is weird, but also trying to be not offensive.  It was just one of those things; just one of those crazy things they made me pose like many different ways and they start taking all these pictures (with their own camera, so they could charge me extra for all the pictures, naturally), they had me go up to the roof of the building and take pictures in these robes.  It was so weird,  I remember feeling just bad, but it's also hard to say no to someone's friend's sister's cousin, even when you know the price is gonna get doubled and you are just a dumb American tourist with traveler's checks so ha, ha, ha. But you know what?  They did send me the pictures, and now I have them, 20 years later in Brooklyn. As do you.