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“You know, we are not as different as people seem to think,” Ahmed said as he filled my cup with more sugary Moroccan mint tea.
“You’re right,” I said. “If we just stop for a second and think about the things we have in common, I think the world would be a much different place”.
I sat in the back area of his jewelry shop on a couch with my new friends, reflecting on how cool it was that I ended up here. After spending the last two weeks in Morocco, I was no stranger to Moroccan hospitality, but my interaction with Ahmed in his shop was different.
It all began with a simple, “mutsharfin” (nice to meet you in Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic), as I walked into his shop in Essaouira, a small city off the coast of Morocco. I had been shopping all day, but I was searching for a ring to bring back home for my mom. Ahmed looked at me, elated that I spoke to him in Darija. In that moment I could feel that a mutual trust was formed.
I am always looking for opportunities to practice Arabic, and Ahmed was very willing to help me practice as I stumbled my way through a conversation with him. After talking for a while at the counter, he asked, "Would you like to stay for some tea?”.
I looked over at my friends who were shopping with me, and they smiled back at me. I realized that was an offer we couldn’t refuse.
Next thing I know, we're sitting on a small couch in the back of his jewelry shop. He brings in a teapot filled with hot water and begins to prepare the tea. Moroccan mint tea, the quintessential symbol of Moroccan hospitality, quickly became one of my favorite things on the trip. It is carefully prepared in a methodological way that is not easy to master. After preparing the tea, he left the shop, and came back with little individually wrapped cakes, to me, they tasted like a Moon Pie.
[Now this is the part of the story where I admit to the reader that I was fully aware that I was taking food from a complete stranger in a foreign country. But I assure you that it was a safe situation. I was there with two other friends, all of us had access to our phones, and we were able to see the exit. We all understood how special this interaction was and didn’t want to miss that.]
As the tea began flowing, so did our conversation. We noticed that despite some pretty stark differences, the little things connect us. We laughed as we ate our cakes and remarked that processed food will probably be the thing that kills us all. He talked about his religion and listened intently as we talked about our faith. He asked us about American politics, and our opinions on what's been going on in the news. As Ahmed talked about his shop, he reflected on the past and uttered the age-old phrase, “Well, people just don’t work as hard as they used to.”
I couldn’t believe it. There's generally one rule to polite conversation: avoid conversations on religion and politics. Now, as someone who studies both political science and religious studies, I’m every dinner host’s nightmare - but in that instance, I guess I was a shopkeeper’s delight. The last thing we expected on this trip was that we would end up having a conversation about God, processed food, and politics with a local. How were we able to have such a productive conversation that was literally engrained in the things strangers are not supposed to talk about?
From my perspective it all came down to respect. I opened the door by greeting him in a way that honored his language and culture. He reciprocated by inviting us to tea. This allowed us to sit down with an open mind and a mutual curiosity to understand each other and our culture better. It not only allowed us to see how similar we were, but to see how small the world can be when we take a step of faith and seize the moment.
Mallory Slucher, of Louisville, KY, is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2025 at the University of Louisville where she studies Political Science, Arabic, and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.