Pistachios: A Love Letter to Morocco

I remember the joy that filled me the first time my small brown hands cracked a pistachio shell open. I wanted to do what I saw my cousins doing. Tall boys browner than me sticking their hands into the pistachio container made of rolled up Moroccan newspaper. This is the Moroccan morning routine. Whoever wakes up first walks down across the street with a handful of coins ready to bicker and hassle to get as many croissants, cuts of meat, msemen, harcha, and fresh roasted nuts and seeds they can get for as cheap as possible. The whole ordeal could take five minutes – this is what happens when I am sent for something. I speak in broken French, argue minimally, and hand them my money. My family yells at me to be tougher every time – or it could take hours. This is when my father or my aunts go out. They make friends with the vendor, it’s not unusual for my cousins and I to find ourselves in our best clothes at the vendor’s house a few days later, my sisters and I pouring tea in between playing catch with the little ones and standing out on the porch to spot stray dogs.

I often wonder what would happen if we stayed there. We wouldn’t be let back in now. I know this isn’t 100% fact (alternative facts, really.) but fear is real, and all it would take is the hijab on my passport for you to see the headline “MOROCCAN AMERICAN FAMILY DETAINED AT (insert airport here)”. People would say “Hey! They’re not even on the banned countries list!” even though it doesn’t matter. Banning 7 countries is banning anyone who looks like they may have ties to those countries. Brown and Black countries. Muslim countries.

I wake up early on a Sunday morning on Penn State’s campus. I put on sweaters and trudge my way to the nearest Walmart, and catch myself buying a bag of pistachios, plastic-wrapped croissants and a mini jar of Nutella. The self-checkout allows for no bickering. I can’t fight the robot lady in broken French into letting be pay for my things in the coins I keep in my pocket. I swipe my debit card and sigh, more money spent.

Apologizing for my culture and nationality has never been in my vocabulary. I never learned how, and I never will. My father came here at an age not too far from mine, and while I could have lost myself in the first-gen need for assimilation – the whole in the immigrant child’s heart – I filled the hole with every trip back to Morocco. With green tea and lamb, I always hated but ate anyway, with broken French and collapsed Arabic. I am from the land of belly dance. The land of carefree children with wild curls and scraped knees. Camels and street vendors who catcall but you ignore it because Brown women were born of steel, red lipstick, and sisterhood unbreakable.

A simple search into Morocco’s travel reviews are filled with white tourists who expected magic. To ride a camel into the sunset, tan by the Mediterranean, maybe “save” some poor little brown kids, buy jewelry and eat at luxury restaurants. They forget the Moroccans are in Morocco. My country is colonized, but hardened by it, the same way others are. We speak French and Arabic, more often than not in the same sentence. Northern Morocco speaks exclusively Spanish. The Jewish Moroccans were taken by the Israeli government just a few decades ago. Beauty stores are lined with bleaching products, posters of Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, and other White Faves are plastered on hair salon windows. I don’t want to look like that. Morocco is not a pretty country. Not in the polished, Aladdin’s Castle sense the tourists want it to be. It is real, it is unapologetic, and needs the help of no one.

I write a love letter to Morocco every day in my head. A love letter, and a letter of apology. I apologize to her for not wanting to be there last time, for staying inside because her men liked to follow me, but this is not her fault. I love everything she has given me. For making me the girl who can’t think unless she’s sitting on the floor. Who sleeps the best on couches because Moroccans were never big fans of beds. Morocco has given me falafel with yogurt sauce, sand in all of my bags that never leaves because I never want to take it out. She gave me my brown skin and curly hair, wide hips, and an affinity for dancing with them. It’s likely my family won’t be going to Morocco within these next four years, but that’s okay. I’ll still hold the one-star flag in-hand and have belly dancing competitions with my other Arab friends. We will jokingly call each other “habibi” and “habibti”, I will say I’m such a Moroccan auntie when I tell my friends to eat more and give them pillows and blankets. I am here to stay, though. Whether it makes right wing-ers comfortable or not. And I will hold my country close every time I crack open a pistachio.