When I heard about the attack in Orlando, I was in Meknes, Morocco, 4,000 miles away from my home state of Florida. I was staying with newly made friends in a riad, a traditional Moroccan house with an open courtyard. The riad is deep in the imperial city, surrounded by walls built long before America had declared its independence.
Nine of us spent two months there as part of the America’s Unofficial Ambassadors program. Just a week before the Pulse nightclub shooting, I arrived in Morocco to volunteer as an English and French teacher, and to learn as much as I could from Moroccans. I did not have a roommate, so I knocked on my neighbors’ dorm room to say hello and make new friends.
Within one or two conversations, my Moroccan neighbors invited me to break their fast with them every day of Ramadan. I took them up on the offer regularly, and together, we spoke French, English and a little bit of Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic. Every one of our nights together ended with us dancing to an eclectic mix of classic American pop songs and classic Arabic pop songs. We looked up songs on YouTube and moved the dinner table aside to free up space to dance either a l’américaine or a la marocaine.
On one of these nights, I told my new friends that they simply had to visit me in the United States. Their reaction was not what I had expected. One of my friends, Maria, told me she was afraid to go to the U.S.; she was specifically afraid of gun violence. I responded blankly, surprised and confused. Was it not I who needed to be afraid of her country?
I thought about how I had gone to shooting ranges with friends or to “pig-pickings,” where shooting skeet and soda cans was the second-best attraction to the actual roasting of pigs. My mother had always been anxious about me attending these events. She grew up in Washington, D.C., but I grew up in a place where most children were hunting by age 15.
Who were these people to be afraid of guns in my country?
Thinking of my home, I consoled Maria, and told her that those acts of violence happen elsewhere. Although many people own guns in Florida –— I think there might even be one somewhere in my house — Florida is home, and it is safe.
And then I heard someone had attacked Orlando, a place about four hours’ drive from where I grew up.
And then it all came crashing down on me — my seemingly unshakeable sense of safety and confidence in my home, and my assumption that this far-off land was inherently less safe.
The day after the attack, my Arabic teacher had our class observe a minute of silence for those in Orlando. There we were, in Ifrane, Morocco, at a university founded by the Saudi king, paying our respects to those gunned down so close to my home.
That night, some other volunteers and I broke the Ramadan fast with one of my students, Yasmine. She took off her hijab as she came home, and kissed her brothers and mother. She was so excited to practice her English and to show us her library, which included a French translation of Nancy Reagan’s biography.
Her whole family was tickled by my Darija. They fed us more food than I ever thought was possible to fit on one table and constantly refilled our glasses with avocado juice, orange juice, tea and coffee. They smiled and laughed, while we translated and talked in hand gestures. They even offered to have us overnight, since it was late.
Ramadan has come to an end. What should have been a joyous end to a holy month was punctuated by reports of new attacks. First it was Istanbul, and then Dhaka and Baghdad. Although it was not close to home this time, I still had friends I scrambled to check on. For the global community, Orlando will recede into a faint and painful collective memory, part of a long and varied list of such events.
I remain conflicted. The guns I grew up with are seen as objects of uncontrollable terror; the country I was constantly warned about going to is remarkably safe. From an ocean away, I feel incapable of processing what is happening in my own state. How is my home country full of danger, while the northwestern Africa country I am visiting — the one that required pre-departure safety training — is somehow safer than the good old U.S. of A.?
Perspective is wonderful but also challenging. It is all very strange.
Rachel Joyner, 19, is studying French and international studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She spent the summer in Morocco teaching languages to youth who have had limited access to education.
