On Sugar and Spice

Coffee is a very important part of my life. Moroccan coffee is intense. It’s strong, often spiced, and extremely sweet. However, most everyone knows that I like my coffee MASUS – with absolutely zero sugar. It makes me an oddity...welcome to my life.

Sometimes people ask why I don’t want sugar, in which case I usually quote The Great Santini: “I don’t want anything to make me sweet.”

Latifa indulges my obsession with masus coffee, but Soukaina refuses. She insists that drinking unsweetened coffee is “so un-Moroccan” and dumps absurd amounts of sugar into the pot as she’s brewing it. She knows I’ll still drink it because I can’t function without it. What really gets me about Soukaina’s coffee, though, is that as sweet as it is, it still has the kick from the spices. Interesting.

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Last month I got in a fight with a cab driver. He wanted a tip. I refused to give it to him because he had offended me. He had muttered some uncomplimentary things about me while he drove me to my destination. He didn’t realize at the time that I understood Darija.

You can imagine his surprise, then, when we found ourselves in the middle of the street, screaming at each other in Darija over a Dirham (roughly 11 cents). A couple of bystanders came, intending to rescue their local GAURIA (white girl), and gave him the dirham he asked for so he’d let me be. I walked away, still furious, shaking my head and thinking, “you guys just don’t get it.” It was the principle of the thing, right?

Minutes later, by the time I reached my door, I was still furious, but no longer at the cab driver. I couldn’t believe I let myself explode like that. True, he started it, but I absolutely lost it. I kept replaying the scene in my head. Who was that girl? Where did all that rage come from? Where was my sweetness? Where was my grace?

The cab driver was the proverbial straw that broke my back. At that moment I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d had enough. Enough of fighting for respect. Enough of having to defend and explain myself. Enough of letting things go, or pretending I don’t understand what people mutter. I had built up months of anger and wounded pride.

I definitely am not that girl, screaming like a lunatic over an insult and 11 cents. But nor am I the Sugarplum Fairy of public diplomacy, conquering hearts and minds with sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. There has to be some middle ground.

A particularly poetic Moroccan said to me a while back, “If you’re too sweet, people will eat you like a cake.”

True, friend. But if you’re too bitter, they’ll spit you out altogether.

What to do?

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My mom sometimes refers to my little sister JENNA and me as Sugar and Spice. When we ask which is which, she diplomatically answers that there’s some of both in each of us – with different proportions, of course. But everyone knows that Jenna’s a tender-hearted darling and I’m a bit more ornery.

Jenna’s been here visiting me in Fez for the past couple of weeks. Through the dance parties and dinner parties, adventures in Fez and beyond, and good old-fashioned sister bonding, her sweetness has rubbed off on me a bit.

I’m realizing that the only way to maintain my sanity in Morocco (or elsewhere) is to stay as sweet as possible (apologies to the Great Santini) without losing my spice.

Kind of like Soukaina’s coffee.