Washington- While I can write a blog, publish a story, or answer friends' and family's questions about my experience abroad in Morocco, there would be something fundamentally different about how I was affected by my experiences and how I convey them to you, my audience. Even the most elaborate recounting of my memories will sorely fail at communicating what really transpired during my 5 months abroad.
Of course I want to be able to recount every detail as it happened but I find it impossible to do justice to experiences that were so real to me and mere "abroad stories" to my friends and family back home. How to truly mesmerize you the way I was memorized when both you and I are now so removed from the moment? It seems to me the ultimate "you-had-to-be-there" paradigm that as much as I want to invite you to relive my experiences with me, I can't. But if I could for a moment... just one fleeting, insignificant, ordinary moment... escape the confines of memory and defy physical laws of time and space, this is a moment I would want for you to experience with me ….
I want to be walking home from school with you on an ordinary day, let's say in October, when you reach into your pocket for your cell phone to check the time out of habit though you know it's the call to prayer and not your watch that's your reference of time here...
I want to share with you the joy of finding a surprise 5 dirham coin in your pocket that you thought you had already spent for the taxi fare home...
I want for you to pinch the lucky coin with your fingers while trying to bee-line through the busy afternoon crowds of the old medina while avoiding baby carriages, beggars, bikers and all other forms of life and obstacles...
I want to feel with you the winning feeling of finding that the freshly-squeezed orange juice cart is magically still in the same place as yesterday though the balding old man with no teeth has been replaced by his spiky, gel-drenched, dark haired junior whose drilling gaze we try to ignore by staring at his obnoxious, yet endearing knock-off Prada T-shirt with Shakira's face plastered beneath the brazen letters...
I want you to notice with me how very out of place yet in perfect harmony he seems in comparison with his surroundings: flip-flops branded with the apple logo, cow skulls grilling opposite the shop where lingerie is sold, side by side with head coverings... clementines and kleenex stacked in neat piles in between stampeding feet, wheelbarrows and wooden crates...
I want to hear you timidly ask the much too eager twenty-something-year-old eyeing you with the oh-so-familiar "hey zwina" for a glass of orange juice in Darija and look on as you watch him dip one of the two drinking glasses at his disposal in a questionably sanitary basin of water meant for “washing”…
I want to witness you shrug your shoulders after the original shock of finding out how your drink will be served and I want to take pride in your smile of resignation as he begins cutting up and squeezing oranges into the glass he so kindly rinsed. I want to be there when he hands you the glass and takes from you the fateful 5 dirham coin with his sticky fingers covered in orange remains and return your single dirham of change...
I want to watch you as you take the first hesitant sip after trying to decide which part of the glass's surface area is least infested with the saliva of previous orange-juice customers... I want to laugh as your eyes light up when the fantastic taste sinks in... I want to roll my eyes when you forget about the angle at which your lips touch the glass in your urgency to take the next sip. And I want to smile on in understanding as you drain the glass, return it and thank your server before he asks you for your number...
After all, that's exactly what I sought to do in the first place... to share an understanding of my experiences, even if just for the moment I just described.
Sahar Kian is a Persian-American student majoring in International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C. She returned to the United Sates in January after a five-month language study scholarship program in Rabat.