More Television Tales

December, 2005 - The Medina (walled city) in Fez, Morocco - the medina in Fez dates back to the 9th century, and is a rabbit warren for the foreigner. In many ways it's a living medieval city, and some people who work as tailors or bakers or shopkeepers live the same way they have for a thousand years. But notice the satellite dishes!

In addition to seeing Seinfeld and Larry King in China, I’ve also seen those shows in Cuba, of all places. In Rabat (Morocco), this past winter, where the hotel was very comfortable and we had a huge room, roommate Dee Wiedeman and I watched the old Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn movie Charade dubbed into French. I think Audrey did her own French dubbing, but whoever did Cary’s voice sounded nothing like him, which was a little disconcerting. We tried to watch Al Jazeera, but that was only in Arabic, which we couldn’t understand. Educated people in Morocco speak beautiful Arabic, French, English, and sometimes a Berber language, like Tazrit; using each language has its own political and practical implications. People speak CMA (Common Moroccan Arabic) at home, learn classical Arabic in school, French in elementary school and English in middle or high school. The Berber languages are a recent addition to the Moroccan curriculum, and they have their own writing system, distinct from Arabic or Roman script. One of the lecturers we heard suggested that the new generation of female Moroccan authors sometimes preferred to write in French, men in Arabic. I was using my ancient but serviceable college French in Morocco and only had a few words in Arabic. At the Hotel Olympique in Fez, our first overnight stop in Morocco, the keys stayed at the front desk, since they were attached to heavy nickel weights the size and shape of antique silver salt shakers. A few of the men at the front desk insisted we claim our room keys by saying the room number in Arabic. When we complained at the Hotel Olympique that there was no remote for the TV (it was mounted high enough that you needed a chair to get to it) the manager shrugged and said, “There are only two channels anyway.” The phone, the heat, and the shower didn’t operate either, but he insisted the phone worked, banging the receiver up and down. “See? Just do this.” Whack, whack. We told him it was cold. He countered cheerfully: “It’s fine!” He solved the problem by moving us to the next room, where the phone, heat, and shower were all in working order. We managed to climb up and turn on the TV and listen to it in French. I gave the room number in French the rest of the time we were in Fez.