Last night we drank beer, ate tapas and listened to a salsa band. Women wore skirts, showed cleavage, sipped wine and danced. We might have been in Manhattan, or Paris, or London—any cosmopolitan city. I dress more or less like I dressed in New York and fit in with most other Rabati women, at least here in the city center. We have an apartment that is bigger and more luxurious than anything we could afford in New York, or California, or most of the other places we’ve lived in the US. (The photo above is a view from our living room.) The weather is just like San Diego. I’ve yet to see a camel. But then there are little things that startle me, emphasizing that I’m in a foreign country. A man walks down the street in front of us wearing a Djellaba, the traditional Moroccan robe, with it’s pointy hood pulled over his head in a way that reminds me of Lord of the Rings. The food smells of exotic spices. Across the street from our apartment, our neighbors keep a goat on their tiny patio. The sound of it braying is a far cry from the noise of the B61 bus plowing up and down Manhattan Avenue outside our Brooklyn apartment. And there’s a constant feeling that you don’t quite understand what’s going on. Those trays of live turtles at the market—they must be sold for dinner, right? Apparently they’re just a popular garden pet. 
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