Strange Impact

It was warm enough for a t-shirt but in my memory that day was always colder. My yellow handlebars familiar with the grime of my palms, grooves of my shoes comfortably on my pedals. I don't remember hitting the car door, but I do recall the slanted perspective I gained as I lay on the ground, my torso above my head. The horizon had been ratcheted loose from its usual place and crossed my vision at an angle; momentarily I felt like all my body parts had been disconnected and dropped in a jumbled pile on the pavement along with my bicycle, rejected pieces from a toy factory.

This voyage was borne of a strange impact and that's the best way I can describe most of my experiences since. What I'm wondering now is, how many bizarre events can occur before they cease to be bizarre?

Before I left I had so many people asking me why I was going and I never once gave an answer that satisfied anyone, including myself. Except once when I told my friend Alyssa that I had forgotten but didn't care.

"Have you ever told a story so many times that you can't even remember the actual event, just what you've been telling people?"

Actual doubt in my convictions hadn't set in until my second night overseas. It wasn't my fault, either, it was my host's. I was staying at the home of a native Casablancan in Calogira, a village just outside that city. What I had expected when traveling in the Arab world was resentment, perhaps an identification between me and the foreign policy of my home country. Adil harbored none of that sentiment. Neither did he resent my wealth and the ease of life I enjoyed in the States.

Actually Khalid had the worst case of travellust I've ever seen. The Arab George Bailey, working for the benefit of his family while internally wanderlusting. The greatest injustice for him is the extreme difficulty Moroccans have in obtaining visas to almost any non-Arab country. His dream is the European holiday, larks to places like Paris and Bangkok. After a night on the town, zipping through traffic on his motorbike awash in violent aromas of spices, roasting meat, stale urine and shesha smoke, we retired to his living room to watch YouTube videos.

We watched one horrifying video titled "Backpacking in Thailand === Brilliant!!!!" which depicted a crew of young and beautiful Brits romping around that country doing nothing but eating, drinking and sunbathing from what I could tell. Set to the tune of Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy." "Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?" goes the refrain. Not if you say, "Care to blithely frolic in a desperately poor country, playing the part of nutrients for a tiny section of the population which grows rich on tourists in the way an algae bloom grows on the surface of a polluted lagoon?"

My vitriol is always as its best when it's raised in my own self-defense. It was the first time I thought, "Really, what the fuck am I doing here? Collecting seashells on the beach?"

A week later, I was collecting seashells on the beach, a little after dawn. I was approached by a guy looking about my age, he had been watching the tide come in. He asked for money, but in Morocco refusing that request is no serious snub and we sat together on the rocks sharing my bottled water. He played us Eminem on his cell phone. I taught him how to count to 10 in English and he taught me how to say "prostitute" and "blow job" in Arabic. Eventually I realized it was late enough to start looking for a hotel, and he gave me his number, insisting that I call him later and invite him to share some dinner. "Maybe," I said in broken French. "I am sleep 12 hours, I think." I was tired, but we both knew it was a blow-off.

Why shouldn't I have bought him dinner? Was it my innate stinginess? My cynical Chicago attitude of not giving anything to those who don't seem to truly need it? An Algerian man told me "Never give money to the young ones; if they are healthy they can work in the fields." If I had called him, he might have continued to petition me for handouts, but would it have been any harder to refuse them?

I ate that evening humbly, fish from a street vendor rolled up burrito-style in thin pita bread. It tasted tough and I felt lonely as I sat outside my hotel watching the touts pursue the tourists.

"Really, what the fuck am I doing here?"