Our Proprietor’s Turban Anew

It was the end of a long day as it always is in Tokyo. Moroccan food.  The gentleman who ran the place wore a rather dramatic blue turban that suggested something Tuareg.  Beneath his head gear he looked like he might have been Moroccan.  But he might also have been Italian.  He could’a been, Bernard Lefkowitz from my middle school, with the way he smiled too.  When I asked him if he’d like to open a Moroccan restaurant in Beijing he said, “Insahala” rather convincingly and automatically which seemed to suggest that his role as chief turban in charge was not simply a game, but in fact his role. 

Moroccan food was nice.  But I placed my foot in my mouth by requesting humus. My friend, who is Moroccan asked, dutifully, but when the answer came back “no,” he explained to me that it was not part of the Moroccan diet.  Oh.  Clearly, I was on Arab autopilot.  Fortunately, we get to learn for all of our lives.  Lance that myth, like something I should have learned with I read Fernand Braudel:  It’s a Mediterranean continuum but the Berbers had different crops and a different diet. 

What did they in fact offer us?  Well, there were olives.  Kinda spicy olives.  Braudell would no doubt nod.  There was a non-descript salad dish. Grilled skewers of chicken that were pleasant but not particularly memorable.  The main dish was couscous, draped in vegetables.  This was certainly solid.  The way it was served reminded me of the way rice was served in Senegal, in a large communal bowl.  The unwritten law is that you have your own triangle of food you can consume that opens to you from the center.  You don’t reach across into someone else’s imaginary triangle to poach choice bits of food from elsewhere in the bowl.  No.  I’ve no idea if this tradition made its way from North to South or in the other direction but when I inquired if the polite person approached dishes like couscous with the same triangular strategy in mind in Morocco I was told, “yes, indeed.”    

Up on the wall the screen saver was flashing pictures of this remarkable North African destination.  I have never been.  Where is there the most extant architecture?  Which city has the most remarkable food?  My friend was from Fez and in his mind there was only one answer to these questions.  I think the thing that struck me most about the pictures was the snaps they showed of the Atlas Mountains, which somehow, in my mind, were things that rose up out of the desert.  Confronting these pictures, they looked more like snow-capped Pyrenees.  Dropping into view, as well, were photos of a blue city.  I thought, when I saw at first, that this must be Jodhpur, where Brahmins, of which there must be a staggering majority, all are allowed (Encouraged?  Forced?) to paint their dwelling blue.  One must assume that in decidedly non-Hindu, Sunni Morocco the blue color signifies something else.  But the visual effect was evocative of the Indian desert citadel.  I considered our proprietor’s turban anew and thought of the view from atop Mehrangarh.

Later, my stepson and I broke out from the pack. We walked and then cabbed, and then reconsidered.  The place we were heading to was closed at 1:00AM. The other bar next door will have to do.  Inside there were mostly about eight or so gaijin sitting around.  On the air was a collection of Sex Pistols song.  My stepson and I tried to talk but as the mix shifted to side one of “Never Mind the Bollocks” I couldn’t help but ask him if he knew each successive song.  “Perfect album.” I suggested.  And it was.  Every song on that album is worthy.  Every song conjures up for me, my time in eighth grade, spinning vinyl in the Pleasantville Middle School cafeteria.  I kept speaking to my son about my little one who is now, the same age as I was then.  Then, when this album was, briefly, everything. 

“London Calling” came on next.  The album that is, to grow musically.  But I wasn’t bothering to explain many of the lyrics.  Had it been the first Clash album, my mood would have been rather different.  That album can stand uncompromisingly beside “Never Mind the Bollocks,” in the spiritual library of my teen mind’s chest of meaning.  But things moved so fast at thirteen and within months of the time this album came out, I explained, I had needed to hate it and hate them, as I’d already moved on to purer pastures. 

Thursday, 8/31/17