Desert Blue

I am lost in Jemaa el-Fnaa. The famous Moroccan square is surrounded by a tangle of narrow alleyways and sanded arches. My hostel is down one of these tight corridors.

I find a shopkeeper to ask for directions. He is young and unassuming. He doesn't call to me or pull at my arm to drag me into his shop. He is dressed entirely in white. A long, white shirt and clean, white trousers.

He's only twenty three and his name is Sallah. This is his shop, he says proudly. He tries to speak Arabic to me. I try to speak English to him. Ultimately, we find common ground in French, although my French consists almost entirely of colors and the names of French cities I would like to visit. His doesn't seem any better.

We sit across from each other on the floor of his shop drinking mint tea that is mostly sugar. There is a rich tomato and chickpea soup, too. My legs stick to the tile.

"This house," I say, in French.

"What?" he says. "Quoi?" Because of course "this house" does not constitute a complete thought.

"House nice," I say, motioning around me. I have forgotten the word for shop already.

He crinkles his nose. "In French," he requests.

I don't have the heart to tell him that was my best French.

I begin acting out the word for fish and we fall into a sort of reverse-engineered conversation: instead of starting with an idea and finding the words to communicate it, we begin with the words and let them dictate the content. We aren't really communicating anything, but it feels like we are.

A few days later I ask Sallah to go with me to the Ouzoud waterfalls. I think it'll be better to go to the waterfalls with a Muslim than alone, and I'm right. He negotiates the cab, and on the hike up to the falls finds great joy in pointing to the wares in different roadside stalls and telling me the gringo price. "This, for you, gringo price: 170 dirham. For Muslim, 30 dirham." "Gringo price, 300 dirham. Muslim price, 60 dirham." Gringo price. Muslim price. All the way up the mountain, smiling, but not ill-naturedly. It is like a secret he is telling me.

The waterfalls, when we get there, are tall, falling into large pools at their base full of bathers. I feel lucky to be here, watching a tired camel lie down on the rocks, and a herd of children splash each other in the water. Sallah orders more sweet tea. We sit on the warm boulders, and the cold mist mixes with the smell of the mint. I feel lucky to have been lost.