Black Cat

A black cat jumped from the roof of the mosque next door, scampered across the top of our terrace wall and then made itself at home on our terrace. As it did so, the late afternoon light turned a ghostly yellow. Hamoud shook his head: bad luck. “If you see one at night and say God’s name, it will disappear. Like a Jinn.” Jinns are the evil spirits we’ve heard tell of in Morocco, though in our experience they’re not frequently discussed with foreigners. We didn’t know the bad luck of black cats was so universal. “Oh, yes,” said Hamoud. “Back cats and black dogs.” Now there’s a different twist, we think. This is one of three neighborhood cats that have been scouting our worksite, weighing the place as a possible residence once the work is finished. Since terrace hopping is second-nature for Marrakech cats, we have no idea how to keep them away.



More often than Jinns, we hear of their opposite: baraka, or blessing. Of course, that’s the name for our blog, as it seemed pretty obvious that for two people to have the opportunity to pack up and move to a new country for a year’s exploration was quite a blessing in any language. We’re told rain is a baraka, the bird living in our house brings us baraka. Frankly, we’re pleased that the list of things that either are or bring baraka is quite generous. The word has many meanings and many uses as well. The most recent usage we’ve learned is a polite way of saying, “that’s all.” As in when buying vegetables at the market, after ordering kilos of black figs, lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados and leeks. The vegetable seller will ask if you want anything else, and the answer, “baraka,” means blessing enough, that’s all for today.

Back on the terrace, the black cat continued to eye us warily, and the work crew (Team Hamoud, we’ve dubbed it) was hard at work. The brother of the chief mason is a long lanky guy who works quite hard all day, except at lunch when he pauses to smoke a little hash in a long wooden pipe. We get along well, despite the fact that he speaks no more than a handful of French words. So in the eerie yellow light on the terrace, we were both a bit confused when he seemed to say something to us about “couper un mouton.” We frankly were not sure if he was speaking in French or Arabic, but he repeated the phrase a couple of times and then for emphasis, drew a line across his throat with a finger. Not quite sure where this was going, we took our usual approach, and called Hamoud to explain.

“He wants you to sacrifice a ram when we finish the house,” Hamoud told us. “It will bring baraka.” We look at each other a little surprised. “Is it to get rid of the Jinns?” I ask eagerly. As we arrived in Morocco we both read a book called “The Caliph’s House,” about a British man who redid a palace in Casablanca and was nearly thwarted at every turn by workers trying to rid the house of Jinns. We’ve had no such problems, and if one of us feels we should count our baraka, the other feels we might be getting a little gypped. At any rate, we tell Hamoud we’d be happy to slaughter a ram in the courtyard to celebrate with the house workers when they finish, so long as he takes the role of honor and does the actual throat slitting. Hamoud is pleased, and shares the good news with his team. We learn that they will all divvy up the meat amongst themselves and give some to the neighbors. The plumber took the opportunity to show off his new drainpipe, and claimed it can easily handle all the spewing blood, unlike older drainpipes where the blood would back up and rot in the courtyard for a week. The imminent slaughter has clearly made the workers’ day, and more than once they mime the throat slitting, giving us a smiling thumbs up. We’re not sure what we’re getting ourselves into, but it seems too late to let down the members of Team Hamoud. Of course, there’s a lot more work to be done before we head out to the ram auction.