Shabbat in Rabat

Wasn't that clever?  Shabbat in Rabat.  I've spent my day thinking of other cities that rhyme with Shabbat that I might visit, and came up with Eilat, Sfat, and Angkor Wat.  Other suggestions are welcomed.

So yes, you can see that the few days without fellow backpackers or a host family have taken their toll.  It's amazing how quickly a lack of socialization options can affect someone.  It's been what, three or four days since I bid Kim and the Hurwitzes goodbye?  I'm starting to feel for the people in solitary confinement.

It's just that everything's a process here.  Rabat is a thousand times better than Casablanca, no question, but it's still au Francais, and while I've got the whole ordering in a restaurant thing down pretty well ("Une chawarma poulet avec une ration du frites et une eau minerale, s'il vous plait..."), everything else takes a combination of Spanish, hand gestures, and grunting.  Faithful readers of this travel log will notice my increased productivity, mostly as a result of being on my own allll day.  Today I left the hotel at like 10:30 and walked to the big mosque at the end of the street ("rue", excusé moi...) out of curiosity more than anything else.  I hung out by the entrance, doing my typical "I don't know what's going on here so please someone come and tell me it's okay to go in" face when some guy did just that.  He saw that I hesitated at the foot- and hand-washing station in the anteroom of the mosque, and when I said, "Je ne suis une musulman," he politely showed me the exit.  Nice guy.

Spent the rest of the morning/early afternoon looking for the shul, whose address I had picked up on an earlier trip to the internet cafe.  Found it with the aid of some nice people at the kosher butcher (and it's a good thing I found them.  The synagogue has no signs outside it) and was told that I wouldn't be allowed in until 5:30, when services are.  I walked around for a few minutes, and as I passed the synagogue again, some other guy was manning the door.  I told him I was a journalist from New York, and he let me in to take some pictures straight away.

Did very little except avoid the rain for the rest of the afternoon, and headed back for services this evening.  True to form, they were in the Sephardi tradition, but unlike the Tahitian Jews, there was no insistent invitation to dinner this time.  There was no invitation to dinner at all, for that matter.  I played dumb again, throwing out the "Help, I'm lost and I don't know how to get back to my lonely hotel from here," but nobody was biting.  Eh, it happens.

So yeah, that's been my shabbat in Rabat so far.  Tomorrow morning's services kick off around 8:30, and then I'm expecting a pretty low-key day if things keep up like this.  Might make my graceful exit from Rabat Sunday morning in favor of Fés, and from there to Chefchaouen, the town I've been looking forward to the most around here.