NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2010 | Page 10

We shu?ed through passport control and headed towards the
giant ferry boat. Then the duty free shops, restaurants and
cafés, a money exchange place; like in an auditorium, I sat in
front of a big screen television, featuring a football (soccer)
game, the national pass time in Morocco. The horn of the ship
belted a shout as we took motion. At the same time we felt
a rumble come from beneath us as if the water was erupting.
Excited beyond my shoes, I took a walk out on the deck, up
front, to see the action. The hazy fog that occupied the dock
area soon dissolved and ?fteen minutes later the rock of
Gibraltar confronted us with its history sticking out of the
water. Geologically it is a part of Spain, a stretch of Andalusia,
almost an island, 2.3 square miles with a tossed salad population:
Spaniards and Brits, the rock speaks English now, Genovese,
Maltese, Portuguese, a stepping stone between Tangiers and the
Peninsula. The tourists ?icked away with their cameras; you
could see cars moving along the roads of the miniature island.
It was saltine windy when I walked back and a man saluted
me in Arabic. I told him, ‘all I can say is Salam Alaikum’.

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A long line of Moroccans, Spaniards, some British and some
Germans formed at the gate of the embankment. We looked
up from the co?ee and beer. I was the only American and
stuck to America with its colonial glue. As Puerto Ricans, we
are still a colony in the twentieth century, historical booty
coming up from the middle ages. Cuba and Puerto Rico, same
boat, Cuba did some cha-cha-cha to crawl out from underneath
the gringos somewhere around 1902, the ma?a came later,
sharks swimming all around.

I told him I was from Puerto Rico and he immediately lit up
like a bulb for he had once lived in New York City and had a
good friend who was Puerto Rican. It was during his sojourn
in that city that he tuned his English into a ?ne instrument.
He invited me to the bar to have a beer. After a glass he showed
me pictures of his French wife and their daughter. He missed
New York City, its people from all over the world, restaurants
and museums, but life was too expensive. In Morocco, the
land provides inexpensive food, vegetables and fruit grown near
the places where it is consumed. Morocco has one of the
best agricultural systems in Africa. A curve of bread will always
make it into your hands and you are not likely to die of
starvation. Mohammed was curious about Puerto Rico, the
politics there and the lifestyle of the people. I told him about
the commotion in San Juan, the high crime rate, shootings
like there was a war going on, whereas there are no ?re arms
in the hands of criminals on the streets in Morocco. I even
observed police o?cers with empty holsters, no guns. He knew
Puerto Rico was a u.s. territory — information he got from
his Puerto Rican friends in New York. It was Spain who gave
us to the Americans after losing the Spanish-American war.
Parts of the Philippines, as well as Guam, became turf like that
and all that comprised the Spanish empire. It’s a strange
chaos on the island, a kind of plantain mush. The independence
movement is more like a cultural and emotional pull, not a
poignant political o?ensive that can get people out to vote, not
to mention to act. The independence movement has no
connection to the popular masses like it once did in the 40s and
50s. Having no grip on this past, popular culture and the
mainstream joined in with the North American project, thus
joining the military ventures during the 1st and 2nd World
Wars, Korea and Vietnam, and the con?icts in Iraq and
Afghanistan. I told my newly found friend that only a certain
segment of the artistic cultural middle class still opted for
independence while the masses show their nationalism in sports
and the lyrics of Salsa music. Mohammed went on about
the crazy things in Morocco and how corruption was part of
the social civil process. Payola, you have to pay civil servants
for everything!

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

Moroccans are fast with languages, picking them up swiftly.
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