The Host Family

     I've been living with my host family for a full week now in their apartment/house on the southwest side of Ville Nouvelle.  Their area is more commonly known as Fez City Center, where a very large area of land is in the beginning stages of construction of some pretty expensive apartments, hotels and parks.  Even Ahmed's house (the host brother) is in a sort of seemingly artificial city center, where there are streets but very rarely used as such by cars.  

     It's hard to call where he lives either a house or an apartment.  The closest thing I can compare it to would be the houses in San Francisco that sit wall-to-wall without any space between, but are still individual structures.  My bedroom is on the third of three floors, and just down the hall from me is the rooftop terrace that has a great view of the other houses' fourth floors and their satellite dishes.  

     Ahmed left on Tuesday to visit his brother in Tangiers, so while his parents and I have been sleeping at his house, we've also been spending quite a bit of time at his sister's house much closer to Boulevard Hassan II and ALIF.  His sister is 36 and I'm not sure how old her husband Khaled is, but Khaled and I have been going to a nearby cafe close to every night around 9 after he gets back from the mosque.  I've made friends with his friends (who all seem to be in their 40s).  The cafe is very much a man's place--where you go to smoke, drink coffee, watch soccer, etc.--and I've only seen a woman there once.  Usually the women stay at home and prepare the second meal of the evening, since we eat once at sundown and then once again around 11:30 p.m.

     As you may know, Islam forbids believers from consuming alcohol, and I'm reasonable certain that it is this restriction alone that has prevented and all-out revolt by the female gender--or at least the permission of alcohol that has hastened such a revolt in other (our) culture.