Museeqa wa khitaab al-malek

Today was a long and eventful day. The Arabic students call Fridays in Morocco "Couscous Fridays" because that is what people eat for lunch every Friday after prayers. Today a few of us were invited to a Moroccan household to eat Couscous with them. The meal consisted of an enormous plate of couscous topped with chicken and vegetables, which we were encouraged to "Eat! Eat!" until we felt about to burst. Then came watermelon for desert. At this point, I was begging for the family to stop feeding us. After the watermelon came a traditional serving of mint tea (shay binana). The meal took two hours and was delicious. To keep a long story short, after the meal, the program director asked if I wanted to stay with a host family. I accepted, and here I am. Out of the hotel and, to my pleasant surprise, back in the house of the Moroccan family who fed us lunch.
In the evening another Arabic
--UNEXPECTED BREAK --
At 11pm my host family asked me to join them for dinner. These people won't stop feeding me!

Anyways, on to the story...
This evening a friend invited me to a private music concert. We met in the old city and he walked me to an unmarked door. He knocked and moments later a man opened the door and led us in. Inside the pink-walled house were a few more Arabic students watching a man playing a finger drum next to a much older man, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor playing a large guitar-like instrument.

The instrument, I found out, is called a ganbaree, and it is a three-stringed, narrow, deep box with a long handle, much like a guitar. The guitar had small cymbals attached to it so that when the man played the gambaree, the vibrations caused the cymbals to sound in time with the music. The singer sang in a mix of Berber and Senegalese and taught us some of the words to the songs. The young man next to him was his nephew and a member of his band. The nephew played complex rhythms on the finger drum that were hard for us to reproduce, though we all tried our best. The gambaree player sped up the rhythm until a couple of the girls started dancing in the room and we were all clapping.

After he finished playing, the man explained the history of the music. He said that when lighter-skinned Arabs shipped African slaves to the Arab World, the slaves brought their music with them. This music was eventually adopted by the Arabs and became a part of the culture that was passed down through the generations. The experience was wonderful and unique.

Later in the evening, the king of Morocco, Mohamad VI gave a speech in which he said he would amend the Moroccan constitution to reduce his own powers and transfer some of them to the elected parliament. The cafes were filled with men watching the speech live, and it was apparently well received, as all night we have heard honking, and seen young people marching and chanting "The King is One! Long live the King!" You can read more about the speech here: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/06/2011617172114510513.html.

A final observation: hilarious Moroccan t-shirts. Young Moroccans have a very European sense of style. The clothing is loud and flamboyant, and consists of knock-offs of expensive brand-name clothing. The message on these shirts is often lost in translation, however. Here is a collection of a few hilarious t-shirt slogans I saw just today:
1. A young man wearing a graphic tee that read QUEEN DISQUARED.
2. A man in his forties wearing a t-shirt that simply said SLAVE.
3. A girl wearing a shirt that stated ME IN SEXY SHIRT.
4. A young teenage boy wearing a t-shirt that read GSTAR RAW.

I'll keep an eye out for more.