Shooma

Sigh, I knew this day would come, though I was hoping to escape it. It has happened to other people in the house but so far I have been exempt. Here's what happened. I am a big believer of "when in Rome". So, in Morocco, most women don't go out alone at night. And, unless you are in some of the main sections of the city like Agdal or downtown, there aren't very many women out at all. For the most part, I have used this as a rule and only gone out at night for dinner or to meet a group of people, usually with my roommates. Last night, however, I just needed some alone time. I had a lot of my mind and I needed to go for a walk with just me and my iPod. It was only about 9:30 so I figured I would be OK for about 20 or 30 minutes. There is a shopping center about 10 minutes walk from the house so my plan was to walk there, walk around a bit and then come home. It started out just fine. Listening to music, smelling the jasmine trees, all was well. Then, when I started to come back home, I noticed a guy was following me and trying to get my attention. I ignored him. He started to walk next to me and talk to me, which wasn't that creepy at first (it happens a lot here) so I just kept walking. Then comes the question, "You want to pass a good time?" Uh-oh, time to go! So I started walking in the middle of the street and continued to ignore him. (Just as an added piece of info, the area that we live in is a pretty nice neighborhood. There are a lot of diplomats and ambassadors that live in the surrounding area and many of the houses (including ours) have a full time guard. That's part of the reason I felt safe walking there.) The guy kept pestering me until finally I turned around and gave him a great big "SHOOMA!"

Shooma means "Shame on you!" but it has a bit of a stronger effect here. Luckily, I haven't had to use it much. A couple of times on the train someone is standing just a bit too close and thinks they can get away with magic hands because it's crowded. Nuh-uh. For me, giving a stern shooma has multiple effects: 1) It shows the person you know a little Arabic. 2) It calls them out on their wrongdoing, literally shaming them. 3) It calls attention to the situation so other people will look to see what someone is doing wrong. All of these worked to my benefit last night. This is probably not the best story to tell seeing as how I will be traveling alone for the next few weeks but I guess it's good practice! Actually I had a whole post ready about Bromance in Morocco but I guess that will have to wait. xoxo