Mom drilled it into my head, ‘NEVER pick up a hitchhiker. EVER. They are all escaped prisoners of violent crimes and will murder you first chance!’. This said usually as we were driving by a detention center, prison or hitchhiker.

Growing up in suburban America in the 70s and 80s I was preoccupied with crime. Crime rates in America, and in Detroit, our neighboring city, were at historic highs. Popular culture (sex, drugs, and rock and roll), the media, conservative and what I deem fear-based values of my home town, and my mom worked in tandem to heighten my preoccupation.

Supporters of the 2nd Amendment, the right to bear arms, mom and dad each had pistols at one point by the side of their beds. They respected firearms, were extremely safety conscious and taught me to be the same. I knew where the guns were and what to do if I ever heard, ‘HIT THE DECK!’. That would indicate that an intruder was in the house and they were ready to shoot.

Oh my God, I mean really?

While I really thought my parents were badass at the time with the whole firearm thing, it also made me anxious and I dreamt up all sorts of grizzly scenarios where I suffered at the hands of an axe murderer (thank you Lizzie Borden), a Manson (thank you Helter Skelter), or a Mafioso (thank you The Godfather). For years I didn’t sleep.

As I transitioned from a pre-pubescent to a pre-teen, I realized that in fact there were not people eager to murder me every ten seconds. That I hate guns and never want to be around them. And that my conservative community, and particularly my mom, dished out enough ‘othering’ to sustain a lifetime of paranoia. So as a newly minted 16-something, I began to explore my percolating leftist notions, took stock of racism in my community, and embarked on the lifelong slog of reworking my internal world order.

Between the years of then and now, I’ve been around, seen a few things and have recently changed my life in a pretty drastic way by moving to Morocco with my husband Aziz. We’re living in Essaouira, a beautiful small city on the Atlantic coast where we’ve recently launched Mid Century Maroc, an online ‘souk’ selling mid-century furnishings found in Morocco.

As recent migrants, we are still in a learning curve figuring out how things work here, learning about the culture, learning the language (me), and of course, what to be careful of. Specifically, what are the things that could kill us, or worse, really mess us up physically (paralysis, stroke, etc.). Descent emergency medical care is three hours away, so it’s been important to do a risk assessment of our new surroundings.

I’ve concluded that violent crime, particularly the use of guns, is just not a thing in Morocco like it is in America. There are lots of reason for this that I won’t get into here, but suffice it to say that I have never felt so safe, ever. But that’s not how many Americans perceive Morocco. When well-wishers sign off on emails or phone calls saying, ‘Be careful’, that is usually code for, ‘Be careful of those crazy Muslims over there!’. So I want to shout out, ‘Be careful of those 2nd Amendment-loving, gun-slinging, QAnon-supporting white CRAZIES over there!’. But I don’t.

Let me get back to the topic of hitchhiking.

I pick up hitchhikers every chance I get in Morocco. We live in the countryside where a majority of people don’t have cars. If a family is lucky they have a ‘Moroccan 4x4’, a donkey. Anytime of the day, people are walking by the road. They are alone, in groups, young, old, male, female and are heading into town for all the reasons you would expect: school, work, shopping, doctor or lawyer visits. I pick up hitchhikers for the simple fact that I have a car, they don’t, and that it just feels mean and selfish not to.

Who you meet on the road depends on the time of day and day of the week. When I’m up and out by 8am it’s the students that I pick up. Five to six will pile in at a time, running wildly when they see me stop. Once they get in the car however, things become very quiet as shyness sets in with occasional whispers and release of stifled giggles.

Around 10am is when single men or women are looking for a lift into Essaouira for work, shopping, appointments. This is usually a chatty kind of drive as we, as is customary, start off with a hefty list of greetings.

Me: Assalamu alaikum (Peace be upon you)

Them: Wa alaikum assalaam (And upon you be peace)

Me: Wash kay dir? (How are you)

Them: Labass, shokran, u inta? (I’m fine, thank you, and you?)

Me: Kulshi bikher, alhamdulillah (Very good, praise be to God)

Them: U inta? (And you)

Me: Kulshi mzien, shokran (Very good, thank you)

Them: Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God)

Me: Alhamdulillah (Praise be to God)

After our greetings we get down to the business of being nosey, a Moroccan pastime. Questions that I am frequently asked:

Where are you from? (America)

Are you married? (yes, to a Moroccan)

How old are you? (56)

Do you own or rent your house? (own)

Do you have children? (yes, two)

Do you need a housekeeper? (no thanks)

Do you need a gardener? (no thanks)

I love these conversations because I get to know more people in my community, such a plus. I get to practice darija (Moroccan Arabic). And then there is baraka.

Baraka, or blessing, flows from Allah (God) to people as well as inanimate objects. Baraka comes to those who are pious but it isn’t something that a person can give to another, only Allah can do that. You can receive baraka many times in a lifetime and it is important to be able to recognize it through gratitude. A beautiful phrase that I hear often when my passengers disembark is, Shokran, barak allahu fik (thank you, Allah (God) bless you). Arabic, the language of the holy Quran, is such a poetic and beautiful language. I never tire of hearing it. It literally calms my mood.

Sundays are especially busy days for hitchhiker picker-uppers like me. 20 kilometers from our house is Hadd Draa, a centuries old Sunday souk where one can buy a long-lashed camel, freshly picked produce, olive trees, or get a haircut. Vendors arrive the night before to claim their space and buyers wake before dawn to make their way. Recalling that so many Moroccans are without a car, Sundays are an especially wonderful time to give lifts as those leaving Hadd Dra do so with heavy bundles containing weeks’ supplies of staples like onions, potatoes, or grain. Leaving this busy marketplace, busses, taxis, donkeys with carts, and Dockers line up to bring people back. But still there are those who can’t or don’t want to part with money, so they hitch.

I met one such traveler last year as I was approaching the roundabout near our home. On our road, people congregate at the roundabout to hitch so it’s a familiar place for me to keep my eyes open in case.

On that Sunday I spied an older man who beside him had a large bundle. I said to myself, ‘Ah ha! He’s coming back from Hadd Dra.’ I pulled over and he approached the window smiling indicating his destination, ‘Douar Laaraich?’. ‘Of course!’, I said, ‘That’s where I live! Yalla! (let’s go!)’.

I got out of the car to open the trunk and noticed the man walking towards a clump of trees away from the car. He bent down and picked up what at first looked like a bale of cotton but was actually a live sheep.

Honestly, my heart sank a tad. I am a realistic vegetarian who understands meat eaters gotta eat and that includes sheep. I don’t preach and in fact cooked meat for my children their whole lives. What I was concerned about was that there was only one place for that sheep. The trunk.

Hamid, the sheep’s new owner, gave me a gigantic reassuring smile and nodded towards the trunk. I got the picture and pushed some odds and ends to the side to make room. He expertly placed the sheep (whose legs were bound) inside along with a large sac of hay.

I thought, ok the sheep seems to be ok, now we can find string to somewhat close the trunk so that, you know, the sheep isn’t SHUT IN THE TRUNK.

In a second, Hamid shut the trunk, gave me another award winning smile and off we went, me laughing, him cheerily guiding me to his off-the-beaten-path home where an abundance of his children were waiting for us. I’ve since picked up Hamid three times and we still laugh about the sheep story.

What I learned (again) that day; Moroccans know how to do stuff that I don’t. And they know how to do it really well because they’ve been doing it since they were 6 when their parents taught them how to do it. And because, for the most part, they are doing that thing in a way to bring the least amount of harm, like sheep transportation, and the most amount of baraka. Baraka is something that everyone strives for, lives to earn.

My mom is still alive at 91. I know she is wary of the fact that I live where I live, that I’m married to a guy named Aziz, that I’m still a vegetarian and still not a Republican. But I did the work a while ago to just love her for who she is and be thankful for all the good things she has given me. There are many details of my life in Morocco that I don’t share with her and the picking up of hitchhikers is one of them. I realize that when things are out of context, it’s an extra challenge to imagine them. But in the meantime, I’ll continue to pick up. Barak allahu fik.

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Aziz & Brooke

Morocco, Hitchhiking and Baraka: Things I Don't Tell My Mom

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