By the end of his “baby shower” last saturday, little Jihad was crying at the top of his poor, tired, tiny little lungs… and all i wanted to do was join him, with my poor, tired, not-so-tiny lungs. But that is life, Jihad, welcome to your new reality. Just wait until you get to start learning Arabic too!

I kid, in all reality, but Saturday and the baby-naming party for Jihad was a rough one to be sure. I got back from Fez exhausted on Friday around 4pm and promptly fell asleep, only waking up to eat dinner around ten. The next morning, still sleep deprived,  I spent quite a bit of time studying, which I would have nixed in retrospect, had I known that I was about to attend an arabic-language crash-course-fiesta-marathon that afternoon. Around noon my grandmother told me to get dressed (I kind of thought i already was, so i took this as a polite way of them telling me to put something nicer on) and we walked to the neighbor’s house. Fatima had just given birth to her new son seven days before, and as is the Moroccan custom, a party is thrown on the seventh day to officially “name” the child. This is not just a party though… this is a PARTY. Like, 80 people, 4 meals, 14 hours of a party.

Now, under normal, well-rested circumstances i might have been in the right mindset to adjust to this and wouldnt have hit the exhaustion wall at hour 10, but unfortunately that wasnt the case. The breakdown was as follows: the first four hours were AWESOME… i was following conversations, trying to participate as much as possible, laughing at jokes, making lame ones myself, and trying to insert myself into the gaggle of women and girls in the kitchen to “help” (in my usual, slow, incorrect way that they have graciously come to see as endearing). The next four hours saw a decline in my outright enthusiasm and i had to rely on mental toughness to keep it up. There was dancing, which was fun, but i started to hit the language “wall” of tiredness, allowing some conversations to just pass me by….

then there were the last 5-6 hours (one of which, the last one, i was allowed to sleep in a back room) where i just became exhausted. I think it is so wonderful that all of these people come together to celebrate babies and show their support to the new mother, but when Moroccans party they party HARD. and LONG. This was my lesson from this weekend…. when you are dragged to an undisclosed location after being told to get dressed…. get ready for the long haul and remember its a marathon, not a sprint!!

An interesting part about the party was that all of the women apply black khol eyeliner on eachother, and even on the new baby. I’ve had this eyeliner applied at many, many houses when i’ve gone over for tea or dinner, as well as various perfumes, lipsticks, kaftans, etc. The omnipresent thing is always the eyeliner, though. I’ve pretty much gleaned that it’s both a beauty ritual, and a celebration tradition. It also burns like a MOTHER. Especially when someone else is applying it for you. It really looks beautiful on them, though, with their dark complextions, eyes and hair (it’s just kind of shocking and very, very black on me, against pale skin and red hair….). It was an interesting, albeit small, epiphany moment I had while they were applying my khol at the baby party… much like henna is simmilar to painting nails, yet has a cultural significance, this khol is much like many other beauty rituals women have at home. It really hurts and burns when you put it on, but it looks pretty afterward. Not that different from getting eyebrows waxed or bleaching one’s hair or something simmilar. Beauty is pain, darling… at home and abroad!

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