The week after Eid was a strange one, overshadowed by the meltdown of my lap-top. Nothing much could be achieved as many people were still on holiday until Wednesday – which was the day my hard-drive died, and after that I was preoccupied by the loss of my computer and also unable to achieve much without it. It wasn’t until the little machine stopped working that I realised how much I relied on it here. It was my connection to the outside world and information via the internet, it was the place where I did my writing, it was our office that contained notes on the research we were doing here, it was my photo album and where I worked on my pictures, it was my guitar lessons as the programme I was learning to play from was on it, it was my source of music as we didn’t have a stereo until our belongings were shipped, and it was our entertainment source for watching movies in the evenings.
Vincent had been playing chess on it when the computer froze and we had to shut it down manually. The next time I tried to start it up a blank screen appeared accompanied by a clicking sound, and then a folder with a question mark over it started flashing. I knew it was bad. The next day I spent hours in an internet café scanning Mac help sites and forums, and most reports of the flashing question mark sounded fatal. The other difficulty was that Macintosh is not widespread in Morocco and I didn’t know how to get it fixed.
By the time I got to my Darija class that afternoon I was distraught. I was so preoccupied that my brain was as shut-down as my hard-drive and I was completely unable to answer the teachers questions. Backed into a corner by her repeated questions that I could only respond to with a blank gaze, the feeling of frustration and humiliation pushed me over the edge. I fled from the room in tears mumbling apologies and saying “I’ve just had a REALLY bad day…” I abandoned the rest of the lesson and retreated home. That evening the thought of going back to class the next day made me so miserable that I wanted to quit the course altogether. However when Vince vocalised my thoughts by saying “why don’t you stop going if it’s causing you so much anxiety?” I resolved to continue, simply because I didn’t want to be a quitter.
Going back the next day felt like a real achievement – I had come very close to giving up but hadn’t done so. The clouds also cleared slightly on the computer front – a friend’s flatmate had previously worked for Apple in America and would take a look at my laptop. He also knew a place in Casablanca that did professional Mac repairs if necessary. His examination and attempts to repair my Macbook confirmed my worst fears however. The hard-drive was toast and I had lost weeks of writing and all of our photos from Spain. I had backed-up recently but not recently enough.
Now resigned to the loss I distracted myself with the preparations for our first dinner party. We had been settled into our rental house for a week and were embarking on a series of dinner parties designed to showcase what we do to build future support for our restaurant and also to get to know our new friends better.
We made a big expedition to Metro to get supplies – wine glasses, plates, napkins, candles, speakers for the iPod (because without the laptop we had no music), ramekins and baking equipment, wine and of course, food. We had planned to serve fish as the main course but being post-Eid (and fish days at the market were Tuesdays and Saturdays) we could not find fresh fish anywhere. The fish on display at Metro was the same as the week before and the smell coming from it was a red alert for major food poisoning. We bought frozen and hoped no-one would notice!
Vince spent most of the day cooking and after my morning classes I ran around making the house presentable, folding napkins, lighting candles etc.
[Earlier in the week we had hired our first ever cleaning girl, a local student who had been recommended by a friend. The experience was strange as we’d never had anyone do domestic work for us before and I felt uncomfortable watching someone do the menial tasks I normally did myself – we hired her simply because the house is big and time-consuming to clean, plus we could afford the luxury, but that was the part that was making me uneasy. I compensated for my discomfort by making her lunch when she’d finished and sitting on the roof terrace chatting. I guess by trying to make her feel like a friend I was attempting to make the job less about a status/money divide and more about her helping me out. I think being brought up in a society as classless as Australia makes the concept of paid ‘servants’ uncomfortable for me to deal with. Plus, having just spent the past two years waiting on and cleaning up after the super rich and knowing how that feels made me especially keen to try to make her an equal, not a ‘servant’.]
Anyway, the dinner party was a huge success. We served double-baked cheese soufflé with pear and walnut salad as the entrée, pan-seared grouper on a bed of confit fennel with a tomato, cucumber and coriander salsa and fresh peas and French beans as the main course and dark chocolate tart with vanilla ice-cream for dessert. The success of the evening was also due to the fantastic company and getting to know some of our new friends here just reaffirmed for us how lucky we are to have landed amongst such truly awesome people.
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