The Dog That Bit Me - Guest Blog #2

Vladimir has been posting comments on the Baraka Chronicles since the begining. Now that he and Stephanie have come to visit us in Marrakech, we thought it only fitting that he do a post of his own. Was this to be a mistake?

"Writing takes something out of me. As I procrastinate on the Internet instead of working, my ego protects itself by likening myself to those Native Americans who eschewed photographs. Something like that, anyway. I create it in my mind’s eye the aversion to writing as a noble fear of losing my soul. It takes too long, I complain. It makes me think too much. All my calories get used up on… Let’s face it… Words. Most of them, empty. I crave to fill them with something. But what?

I am told that an audience of faithful Baraka Chronicles readers awaits (and/or dreads) my post. So as I sit in the courtyard of Dowe-Sandes’s Dowe-Sandified riad sipping their beer and listening to the soft sounds of French lounge singers murmur from Ipods unseen, I try to come up with something pertinent to say. Something a little less trivial than a say… a travelogue on Moroccan expat whateverness.

So let’s start with back-story. An appetizer, if you will.

Late September 2004. Venice, California. A dog bites me. A pint of blood is lost to the streets. Scars are formed. And my life is changed forever. One of those moments that you look at in retrospect and see as a fork in a road. (And no salad fork here. Large… Heavy…. Serving fork. Turkey or roast beef, anyone?) Why? A woman stayed instead of leaving (to take care of the wounds, you see). The wayward ego that is “I” allowed for love. And now look. A scant two years later, my life as I know it “c’est finis”. 41 in December. A visit from the stork in March. I spend my days in Marrakech in a fog of diesel weighing my options. There are the small questions of how many of my future daughter’s diapers I’m willing to sacrifice to a rug merchant or a punch metal lamp broker to weigh down my already overstuffed bags. And of course, there are the bigger life altering questions of direction. Direction, you ask? Then let’s change it. An aside:

A bit about our trip. It is a honeymoon-anniversary-let’s get out of town quick before the baby comes voyage. Italy first, Morocco last. Two continents. Western this… Africa/Middle East that. I could do a couple of paragraphs for an airline magazine on the comparison alone. But everyone reading is already ahead of me on this. Platitudes, really. I won’t bore you. Just… You know… Keep it in mind.




Italy. Euro robbery. But… Nice. Villa. Olives. A problem with the choice of gas to put into the rental car. But… Can’t complain. It’s Tuscany. The countryside alone! I mean, come on! A man could live here. With a wife and family. But Euros. Euros are a problem.

No problem. Catch the Marrakech express and there you are. The streets, as narrow. Cobble stones, a little newer. And I am, suddenly, what you would call a third world kind of guy. Maroc, Maroc. The royal we. The poetry of mayhem. And oh, those lovely Dirhams. Ahhhhhhh.

But, but, but, but… No matter where you go… You know the rest. Let’s change directions back. A hard left into the souks of my paranoia.

I am… From ersatz screenwriter to ersatz restaurateur to ersatz contractor to… What? Husband…. Father to be… I wonder if “ersatz” will follow me into these rather more important of my life’s pursuits. I sway adrift in possibilities. (A positive, I assure you. They ARE possibilities, these days.) What will I do tomorrow, and a week from now… Next year?

I fantasize. As does my wife. About adventure. Telling the landlady to eat my unwashed shorts and taking off. And I mean OFF! My friends live in Morocco! Why can’t we? Well… There’s the kid. And mumps. And slight impediments of lack of French. Then there’s the money thing. Play money turns to real the minute denominations shift from a hundreds to millions for a riad of our own (without the Dowe-Sandes touch at that.) And then there’s work. What would I? What would she? Would little one be mad at having to learn Arabic and French and English and a Russian word or two… Or would she just become a princess of the world who’d love us for a life less ordinary… Away from everything LA that never meant a thing to me. And then our friends. The families back home. What would my mother think of losing granddaughter to the four winds for a year or five?

Gee. I don’t know.

In any case... Direction. That’s the thing these days. It’s what I think about. And now I think about it as I shop for lamps. And Marrakech? It is the perfect place for someone who is relatively lost to think about these sorts of things. N’est pas?

The blog meanders, as do I. But there are possibilities galore. And that is lovely, in its scary way.

And so I raise my glass to Marrakech and to the Dowe-Sandes and their well-appointed lair. Salut!

To be continued. Surely. But for now…

Au Revoir"

-Vladimir Nemirovsky