Visual Stimulation

Today was full of firsts. I suspect that here you experience something new every day. This may be true everywhere, but perhaps my senses become dulled when I am familiar with my surroundings. Had I come here prior to Italy I would have been a much less tolerant prick. The first new thing I saw today was my first fight. Unlike the passive Italians that I have witnessed for the past three months who are content to get in each others' grill, but do nothing more--Moroccans exchange blows. After some Arabic profanities, formalities were exchanged and it was on like Donkey Kong. The melee tumbled into a nearby store. The store and street packed, a mob has gathered. The two fighting are under 25, so the blows are fierce and the movement swift. One kid's movement is hindered by his nice leather coat. As he removes this, members of the crowd surge and separate the bought. The crowd divides the two and as soon as it started it is over, no police, just citizens keeping the peace. So I decide to walk on to the new city for the evening. Here I witness my first auto accident in Morocco. It involves two scooters, no surprises here, and one crippled man. The man on two canes somehow finds himself in the middle of the street (logically as this was no place for a healthy person). So the scooters are whizzing down the street, approaching each other. Each decides to pass the slower traffic taking the ambiguous middle lane. As they accelerate and claim the center line, wall-ah the man on two canes appears. Both motorists swerve to avoid him--one choosing right the other left. Blam-o, the crunch of metal, screech of rubber...a head-on encircles the crippled man, still standing, like Moses in a parted Red Sea. Oh the irony, which I can say now as no one was hurt. A spellbinding spectacle which is somehow normal in Morocco.