For some reason, homesickness has been hitting me hard the last couple mornings. I suppose it’s because the end of this trip is just a week and a half away, and so rather than look out ahead to the next leg, I’m starting to be more aware of the parts of my life in Elkhart that I’m missing: football camp, my gardens and yard, hanging out with friends on my deck. It’s been almost five weeks since I’ve sent a text or listened to NPR (!! – till now, I doubt I’d ever gone more than a week without NPR in the last 15 years), or felt a single drop of rain. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not complaining. Once I start roaming and exploring amongst the hills and little Azrou streets full of small shops and mingling amongst the local Berbers, I love it here. And my hotel is perfect – not so “nice” as to induce guilt, but with enough creature comforts – western toilet and shower in my room, luxurious foliage climbing the walls and balconies, wi-fi (even a couple of bars worth in my room – woohoo!) – combined with the rural sounds of sheep, chickens and donkeys in the neighborhood.
I wish you all could see just how earthily picturesque Azrou is, but I’ve been loathe to carry my camera. Not only is it the equivalent of sending up a sky-high smoke signal announcing, “Hey y’all, there’s a tourist here!” but I’m reluctant to photograph locals. Nat & Rod do a fantastic job of taking shots that humanize locals in their photos, but when I snap the pic I often feel like I’m objectifying people I don’t know. There are exceptions. Hopefully in the next few days I’ll be able to write about visiting Abraham’s tomb in Hebron/Al-Khalil (first name is Jewish, second is Islamic – I feel obligated to use both so as not to take a side). I put aside my rules against photographing locals to ask the young Muslim boy who showed me Abraham’s tomb if I could take his picture, and it’s perhaps the photo of all the hundreds of the last weeks that twists my guts the most.
In the past, traveling provided me time to think and then post those reflections on the blog. Lord knows I’ve had as many or more thoughts and reactions on this trip, but I’m struggling mightily to put them into coherent threads. Nothing in Japan or Korea approached the discombobulation of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, or the historic and modern interactions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Like Descartes, I’m stuck trying to figure out a base of reality from which to synthesize my observations and reactions. In the meantime, here are a few photos I snapped on my way to Azrou and from my hotel balcony.
