“Anti craazy,” Khalid tells me, even though he’s the one dancing around the room to the Macarena and I’m the one sitting stationary on the couch. “Laa, anta crazy,” I reply, unable to help but smile from the mischievous look on his tiny face. I move out of my homestay in a few hours, at which point I will move in to a flat with five of my friends, only a few blocks away. However, as I sit at my computer attending to my emails while Khalid, my homestay brother, dances around and pretends to talk on his fake cell-phone, it feels just like a regular Sunday morning with the El Abbadi family. I have spent two and a half months with my Moroccan family, which has been just enough time to fall in love with them, feel annoyed with them as I would with my own siblings, and then become sad about leaving. I have survived countless six to seven-hour birthday parties and name-day parties with my aunts and cousins and siblings and parents and family friends who are referred to as aunts or cousins or siblings and struggled through evenings of homework while Khalid and Khouloud are competing with the volume of my host mother’s favorite TV show. However, despite the difficulties of living in close quarters with a new family, I would not trade my experience for the world.
Having younger siblings is something I always secretly wanted, and the past few months have allowed me to feel as though I have a little brother and sister while also making me appreciate the serenity of the situation I have, back at home. Khalid is truly the cutest six-year-old I’ve ever met. On the days when I’d see him on the street while walking to class and he’d run to say hello, or when he’d see me first and attack me from behind, his dimpled smile full of chocolate, I could’ve died happy. Despite being a strange older girl in his house who can’t speak his language, he took to me incredibly quickly. Almost immediately, Khalid chose to hold my hand instead of his mother’s while walking around at night and would find me to play cards at large family gatherings instead of running around with a soccer ball with his older cousins. We have kept the “anti crazy, laa anta crazy,” (you are crazy, no you are crazy) thing going since early on in the semester, and his little voice saying, “Aleksandaraa,” when he’s doing something silly and wants me to watch is something I am going to miss dearly, when I’m gone. Khouloud is just as sweet, but she is at the universal pre-teen sassy age that most girls reach around ten or eleven, and occasionally her sassy side decides that I am the enemy. However, Khouloud and I have also shared many fun moments, like dancing together at several family parties, cuddling together on the couch under the same blanket to watch our favorite Turkish soap opera, “Fatima,” and ganging up on Khalid when he won’t leave her alone. Khouloud is a beautiful and incredibly smart young girl, and I look forward into keeping in touch with her.
Mama Fatiha and Baba Bouselham were quick to make me feel at home, as well. And as the semester has gone on, I have gotten very close with and felt increasingly protective of Mama Fatiha. She helped me with my Arabic homework (even though it usually resulted in an argument with Khouloud over which answer they thought was right), took me to all of the name-day parties for newborn babies that she was invited to (all of which lasted over six hours), and even scrubbed my back at the hammam. This past week, Bouselham and the kids were gone for a wedding for almost a week and left Fatiha and I at home, together. The first night we were alone, Mama Fatiha made pizza and we ate it together on the couch while watching movies and sipping Pepsi. It felt just like a regular mother-daughter night at home. On Thursday, we had a culminating celebration with the families at the CCCL. Mama Fatiha dressed me up in a traditional Moroccan-inspired red dress and sprayed me with her perfume, and then we walked together to the party. All of the families had dressed up their new “sons” and “daughters” and paraded them, prom-day style, into the hall where we danced to a Moroccan band and had cookies and tea. All of the mothers and siblings laughed at our dancing and took pictures of us and with us, their proud smiles stretching wide, and Mama Fatiha beamed when I danced with her. After the party ended, we walked home in the summery purple haze of the setting sun, arm-in-arm.
The most challenging part of living in a homestay was not that I couldn’t speak English or take a normal shower or sleep in a real bed, it was simply just living “at home” again. Since going to college, I haven’t lived at home with parents for longer than a month in almost four years. I had to re-learn how to do homework with tons of noise in the background and to check in with my mother if I wasn’t coming home for lunch and get used to not being able to sleep in. But even if I had to wake up early on the weekends, I woke up to freshly brewed coffee and breakfast, I came home to smiling faces and clean laundry, and always had someone caring about my whereabouts and well-being. And that is all anyone can ask for. They are truly عائلتي (‘aa’ilatii) - my family.