I finally have enough nerve and energy to write about a very scary experience I had over the weekend. The encounter has played itself over and over again in my mind and I’m finally at a point where I feel it slipping away. I need to get it down on paper before it has completely erased itself though. I’ll start by giving the entire story and then work my way toward the reason why I am focusing this post on a purse.
It was a Friday night and my girl and I decided that we wanted to get out of the house. The students didn’t have school on this day because it was the Moroccan Independence day. We decided that we didn’t want to do a bar or anything so we went down to the Cornish and had dinner at the TGI Fridays. Before we went to the Cornish, we stopped by a coffee shop first and sat down for about an hour and had coffee. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was tired and was fine with going home and just going to bed. We told each other that we would keep each other in check about not taking opportunities to meet other folks and just staying cooped up in the house doing nothing. So we had our coffee and we headed down to the Cornish. As always it was full of people, full of traffic, and full of entertainment. I was glad we had decided to go. We ate, we had terrible margaritas, and then we left. It was about 12:00am at this point. We took a taxi back to our neighborhood and started having a deep conversation. My girl and I were having a conversation about personal experiences in Casablanca and how everyone, whether Black or White, are going to have their own experiences. Either way, we don’t live in the same area so we were dropped off in an area where we could both walk home safely. We are walking and talking and she walks past a cutie! She catches eyes with him and he catches eyes with her and they both stop. She keeps saying Tiffany don’t leave me with him… Tiffany don’t leave me with him… Ok I’m not going to leave. He walks up to both of us and low and behold he only speaks Arabic and French. Luckily my girl speaks “good enough” conversational French so they start talking. She is talking to him and translating the conversation for me… BORING! I can’t get involved because I just don’t have the language. So we stand there talking to Mr. Moustapha for about an hour. We are on a well-lit and busy street so really it’s not a big deal. So again, I’m tired. I’m ready to go. From where we were standing, there were two ways for me to get home. I could go down a street that is a direct route to my street, but it is away from all of the busy-ness of the city, I’ve taken this street plenty times but not at 1:30 in the morning. My other option was to stay on the busy street and walk all the way around to end up on my street. I was tired. I kept telling my girl I’m about to leave you… they were so much into this conversation that it didn’t seem like it was going to end anytime soon. I went ahead and crossed the street heading for the direct route street instead of going all the way around. I remember saying to her earlier that it was getting late and that we should go because we both had to walk home. Mustahpa, the guy that she was talking to all that time, offered to walk us both home. We’re thinking, brotha we don’t know you, so my girl said to me, “I’ll just walk you half way.” So when I crossed the street that was finally enough to get them to say goodbye to each other and he left. She came over to the other side of the street with me.
So we start walking down the street and I’m waiting for her to tell me about this French conversation with this boy that I was completely left out of. So she’s telling me the story. It’s not unusual for cars to pull up to the side of you while Moroccan men yell out in French, I’m assuming, words to convince you that they are interested in you. I would be shocked to have one day when this didn’t happen. You know if you are trying to get a dog to come near you, sometimes you’ll do the kiss, kiss, kiss sound with your lips. Well that’s what Moroccan men do to attractive women. They kiss, kiss, kiss at women like they are dogs!! Not so attractive. Anyway as soon as we turn the corner to go down this street, a car pulls up and as usual we completely ignore them. A guy stuck his head out of the window and said something in French and we said our “la, la, la” which means “no, no, no” and kept it moving. They didn’t though. My girl is talking to me, still telling me about Moustapha, so her back is toward the car and I’m facing the car watching them. I see them talking and I see the car move forward, then I see it move backwards, then I see it stop. Both of us are thinking, “Now this is getting annoying” and my girl says, “should we just walk back toward the busy street?” So when I see the car stop I said, “yes, let’s walk back to the busy street.” While all this is going on, she is still talking about Moustaphas butt and is not paying attention to these dudes. I guess it’s just too normal for us so we aren’t even bothered by it anymore. So we turn around and start walking back to the busy street and one of the four guys decides to get out of the car. In my mind I’m thinking, this boy doesn’t understand the word No. I’m thinking he’s getting out of the car wanting to talk. So he is approaching my girl but he never stops going toward her. I remember her saying, “boy you better get back” and she grabs him by the throat, like pushing him away from her. Then he comes back toward her and it finally dawns on me that he doesn’t want to talk. He’s trying to get her purse. I had my purse to though. So I run up to him and I push him off of her and as soon as I pushed him off of her she punches the hell out of him. I mean knocks him to the ground!!! He falls. I grab her and I’m like ok let’s go. I see that he’s on the ground so my first instinct is RUN. The sidewalks here are for nothing so she positions herself to run and because of the dip in the sidewalk, she falls. Dang… so I run back and this man has already gotten up off the ground and is going for the purse again. Out of nowhere like four men run up and bum rushes this guy to the ground. At night, there are people out all the time. We call them the blue shirts because that’s what they wear. They are out watching the buildings and the banks and stuff every night. So when they knocked the guy to ground I’m thinking ok we’re good. But I’m thinking in mind, oh no he didn’t! So I run up to the man while he’s on the ground and punch him right in the face. I hurt my finger too… Somehow he gets up and is able to run back to the car and that’s when the car drove off. One of the blue shirts took a brick and threw it at the car but they still drove off. After all that… he still didn’t get that purse! The men that came and helped us asked where we were going and if we needed a cab. I just went back to my girl’s house and stayed there for the night.
This felt like about 10 minutes but I’m sure all of this happened in less than 5 minutes. I look back at all the signs and things we could have looked for before all this happened. My girl says, “Did Moustapha sick them on us?” I’m thinking, girl if he wanted our purses, as long as ya’ll were standing there talking and being all gooey gooey, he could have had your purse with no struggle. Then I remembered that when that car pulled up beside us, I remember seeing that the far back window had been broken out. Not the passenger side or back passenger side window but the little peep window in the back. I’m thinking that car was stolen and those boys were up to no good anyway. I told my girl I said, “they aren’t done for the night, they are off to the next woman walking by herself with a purse.” They were probably taking turns. I had a gut feeling before walking down that street anyway and I didn’t listen to it. I have no idea if those guys were in the car watching us while we talked to Mustapha and were just waiting for us to walk away. Could have been…. but honestly we don’t know. I don’t know if we could have done anything differently either. We are adult women living in a big city. We aren’t always going to be home before 2am and now we have to prepare for that. So the first thing I think of is mace… that’s illegal. Buy a knife… well I don’t want to kill anybody. Oooh a Taser gun… that’ll kill somebody too but it’s illegal as well. Don’t carry a purse anymore…. This one has been on my mind and as I go back and forth about it I just think, why can’t I carry a purse? Should I have to sacrifice that? Usually if I go to a nightclub, I don’t carry a purse. I’ll carry a small sack that my phone, camera, house keys, and money can fit into. But we didn’t go to a nightclub so I didn’t worry about it. Either way, I know something is going to have to change because both of us have been grounded by this experience. I don’t see us as the victims though. We actually were in a place where we were able to go back to my girl’s house and laugh about it. It was funny because when we were at TGI Fridays, they were playing Monster Knock-Out on the TV and we had just seen all these folks getting knocked out on TV. We didn’t know that was preparation for my girl to get pumped enough to knock somebody out that night. But honestly it all set back in the next day. Watching your back when you’re walking, looking at every Moroccan man as an attacker, and I clutch my purse even tighter now. Well getting this out feels better than holding it in. I actually understand how the first lady in our group felt when she had her purse snatched the first night we arrived in Casa. Although he didn’t get away with the purse this time, he changed the way that we look at this city.
It was a Friday night and my girl and I decided that we wanted to get out of the house. The students didn’t have school on this day because it was the Moroccan Independence day. We decided that we didn’t want to do a bar or anything so we went down to the Cornish and had dinner at the TGI Fridays. Before we went to the Cornish, we stopped by a coffee shop first and sat down for about an hour and had coffee. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was tired and was fine with going home and just going to bed. We told each other that we would keep each other in check about not taking opportunities to meet other folks and just staying cooped up in the house doing nothing. So we had our coffee and we headed down to the Cornish. As always it was full of people, full of traffic, and full of entertainment. I was glad we had decided to go. We ate, we had terrible margaritas, and then we left. It was about 12:00am at this point. We took a taxi back to our neighborhood and started having a deep conversation. My girl and I were having a conversation about personal experiences in Casablanca and how everyone, whether Black or White, are going to have their own experiences. Either way, we don’t live in the same area so we were dropped off in an area where we could both walk home safely. We are walking and talking and she walks past a cutie! She catches eyes with him and he catches eyes with her and they both stop. She keeps saying Tiffany don’t leave me with him… Tiffany don’t leave me with him… Ok I’m not going to leave. He walks up to both of us and low and behold he only speaks Arabic and French. Luckily my girl speaks “good enough” conversational French so they start talking. She is talking to him and translating the conversation for me… BORING! I can’t get involved because I just don’t have the language. So we stand there talking to Mr. Moustapha for about an hour. We are on a well-lit and busy street so really it’s not a big deal. So again, I’m tired. I’m ready to go. From where we were standing, there were two ways for me to get home. I could go down a street that is a direct route to my street, but it is away from all of the busy-ness of the city, I’ve taken this street plenty times but not at 1:30 in the morning. My other option was to stay on the busy street and walk all the way around to end up on my street. I was tired. I kept telling my girl I’m about to leave you… they were so much into this conversation that it didn’t seem like it was going to end anytime soon. I went ahead and crossed the street heading for the direct route street instead of going all the way around. I remember saying to her earlier that it was getting late and that we should go because we both had to walk home. Mustahpa, the guy that she was talking to all that time, offered to walk us both home. We’re thinking, brotha we don’t know you, so my girl said to me, “I’ll just walk you half way.” So when I crossed the street that was finally enough to get them to say goodbye to each other and he left. She came over to the other side of the street with me.
So we start walking down the street and I’m waiting for her to tell me about this French conversation with this boy that I was completely left out of. So she’s telling me the story. It’s not unusual for cars to pull up to the side of you while Moroccan men yell out in French, I’m assuming, words to convince you that they are interested in you. I would be shocked to have one day when this didn’t happen. You know if you are trying to get a dog to come near you, sometimes you’ll do the kiss, kiss, kiss sound with your lips. Well that’s what Moroccan men do to attractive women. They kiss, kiss, kiss at women like they are dogs!! Not so attractive. Anyway as soon as we turn the corner to go down this street, a car pulls up and as usual we completely ignore them. A guy stuck his head out of the window and said something in French and we said our “la, la, la” which means “no, no, no” and kept it moving. They didn’t though. My girl is talking to me, still telling me about Moustapha, so her back is toward the car and I’m facing the car watching them. I see them talking and I see the car move forward, then I see it move backwards, then I see it stop. Both of us are thinking, “Now this is getting annoying” and my girl says, “should we just walk back toward the busy street?” So when I see the car stop I said, “yes, let’s walk back to the busy street.” While all this is going on, she is still talking about Moustaphas butt and is not paying attention to these dudes. I guess it’s just too normal for us so we aren’t even bothered by it anymore. So we turn around and start walking back to the busy street and one of the four guys decides to get out of the car. In my mind I’m thinking, this boy doesn’t understand the word No. I’m thinking he’s getting out of the car wanting to talk. So he is approaching my girl but he never stops going toward her. I remember her saying, “boy you better get back” and she grabs him by the throat, like pushing him away from her. Then he comes back toward her and it finally dawns on me that he doesn’t want to talk. He’s trying to get her purse. I had my purse to though. So I run up to him and I push him off of her and as soon as I pushed him off of her she punches the hell out of him. I mean knocks him to the ground!!! He falls. I grab her and I’m like ok let’s go. I see that he’s on the ground so my first instinct is RUN. The sidewalks here are for nothing so she positions herself to run and because of the dip in the sidewalk, she falls. Dang… so I run back and this man has already gotten up off the ground and is going for the purse again. Out of nowhere like four men run up and bum rushes this guy to the ground. At night, there are people out all the time. We call them the blue shirts because that’s what they wear. They are out watching the buildings and the banks and stuff every night. So when they knocked the guy to ground I’m thinking ok we’re good. But I’m thinking in mind, oh no he didn’t! So I run up to the man while he’s on the ground and punch him right in the face. I hurt my finger too… Somehow he gets up and is able to run back to the car and that’s when the car drove off. One of the blue shirts took a brick and threw it at the car but they still drove off. After all that… he still didn’t get that purse! The men that came and helped us asked where we were going and if we needed a cab. I just went back to my girl’s house and stayed there for the night.
This felt like about 10 minutes but I’m sure all of this happened in less than 5 minutes. I look back at all the signs and things we could have looked for before all this happened. My girl says, “Did Moustapha sick them on us?” I’m thinking, girl if he wanted our purses, as long as ya’ll were standing there talking and being all gooey gooey, he could have had your purse with no struggle. Then I remembered that when that car pulled up beside us, I remember seeing that the far back window had been broken out. Not the passenger side or back passenger side window but the little peep window in the back. I’m thinking that car was stolen and those boys were up to no good anyway. I told my girl I said, “they aren’t done for the night, they are off to the next woman walking by herself with a purse.” They were probably taking turns. I had a gut feeling before walking down that street anyway and I didn’t listen to it. I have no idea if those guys were in the car watching us while we talked to Mustapha and were just waiting for us to walk away. Could have been…. but honestly we don’t know. I don’t know if we could have done anything differently either. We are adult women living in a big city. We aren’t always going to be home before 2am and now we have to prepare for that. So the first thing I think of is mace… that’s illegal. Buy a knife… well I don’t want to kill anybody. Oooh a Taser gun… that’ll kill somebody too but it’s illegal as well. Don’t carry a purse anymore…. This one has been on my mind and as I go back and forth about it I just think, why can’t I carry a purse? Should I have to sacrifice that? Usually if I go to a nightclub, I don’t carry a purse. I’ll carry a small sack that my phone, camera, house keys, and money can fit into. But we didn’t go to a nightclub so I didn’t worry about it. Either way, I know something is going to have to change because both of us have been grounded by this experience. I don’t see us as the victims though. We actually were in a place where we were able to go back to my girl’s house and laugh about it. It was funny because when we were at TGI Fridays, they were playing Monster Knock-Out on the TV and we had just seen all these folks getting knocked out on TV. We didn’t know that was preparation for my girl to get pumped enough to knock somebody out that night. But honestly it all set back in the next day. Watching your back when you’re walking, looking at every Moroccan man as an attacker, and I clutch my purse even tighter now. Well getting this out feels better than holding it in. I actually understand how the first lady in our group felt when she had her purse snatched the first night we arrived in Casa. Although he didn’t get away with the purse this time, he changed the way that we look at this city.
