It's a Girl

Why is it that the French Consulate offers its expats concerts and art openings while the American Consulate is obsessed with dire warnings of the bird influenza? Figuring it might be nice to meet a few of the reported 69 Americans living in Marrakech, I trudged off to the “American Corner,” not more than a room in a cultural center on the edge of the medina, to hear about the flu with a friend. I read Gina Kollata’s “Flu” about the 1918 influenza that killed more than the two World Wars combined, and maybe I’ve got a bit of American germ paranoia, though I can promise anti-bacterial hand wipes have never crossed our threshold. Anyway, Elizabeth and I arrived early and waited outside in the shade of a tree for the throngs of health-crazed Americans. Thirty minutes later, a few Moroccan gardeners walked by, shooting us a curious look, but no Americans. So we waited some more. Finally, we were ushered into the American Corner, where we perused books about American quilt making and hiking in the Rockies, and waited some more. After about an hour, the Vice Consul entered and introduced herself. She also apologized for the day; evidently, the American School teachers had asked that the seminar be pushed back a few hours so that they could attend. No one thought to let the other Americans know; I guess teachers trump loafers. Anyway, we decided that the day was far too nice for waiting about and that we’d leave the viral campaign to others more capable. Wash you hands often and avoid the chicken market were the take-aways from the brochure pasted to the wall. I smiled as I thought of my imminent trip to the mellah (and the chicken market) for dinner fixings.

A few days later, we decided to sample the offerings at the French Consulate: a flute concert – Telemann, Mozart, Michel Pignolet de Monteclair - performed by two Frenchman flown in from Paris on traditional instruments, or those fashioned after old-school flutes and piccolos and such. First off, let’s just say that the French Consulate, with its elegant garden full of blossoming fruit trees and stately reception rooms lit by tiered silver candelabras, would look down its haughty nose at the scruffy American Corner. We only got in – me with a box of leftover pizza hidden in my bag beneath a silk shawl – by way of our faux-French friend. The two flutists were right out of a New Yorker cartoon: disheveled with too-long hair, slight, slouching frames and a straight man/kooky comic shtick that was all too familiar. The playing was pleasant enough, especially a piece by Japanese composer Ryohei Hirose, played on enormous wooden flutes that looked like hollowed out bamboo trees. Midway through the Montclair fugue, there was the sudden boom of a canon, followed by another, and another. Alarmed at first, a few in the audience recognized the official heralding of the arrival of the King’s second child, Princess Lalla Khadija. Between the 21 canon shots, strangers smiled at each other and whispered, “She’s arrived. The Princess has been born!” Though the musicians played on stoically amidst the booms and the twitters as if nothing special were afoot, we couldn’t help but feel that the arrival of the Princess mid-concert gave added might to the consular trumping the Americans received at the hands of the French. Lighten up, is our missive to the US staff. It’s Marrakech, after all, let’s have a bit of fun.

And fun on a grand scale is what the 33,000 or so prisoners that the King pardoned in celebration of his daughter's birth must be having.