Re-Entry

We’re always really sad to leave Morocco. For several days before we go I tear up occasionally when I see the kids having a cuddle with an auntie or uncle, and there’s always a lot of crying when we leave for the airport. I dread that moment.

Sunday night I got everything packed up and got to bed pretty late – around 1 a.m., planning to get up at 8 to head out for the airport at 10. Seven hours of sleep is pretty good compared to my normal sleep habits. At about 4 a.m. I heard the dreaded words, “Mom, I puked.” I opened my eyes just in time to see Aliya throw up again on the comforter she was sleeping on. I got her cleaned up and put back to bed, and then spent (what felt like) the rest of the night obsessing about how I was going to get a puking kid through the journey home. Adlani had been poked in the eye the day before and had not opened his eyes since (this is the 4th or 5th time he has spent several days with his eyes closed after a minor eye injury), so I already had a blind kid. Now I had a vomiting kid, along with Norah who is enough of a handful under normal circumstances but was now pretending to also have a stomach bug because of the sympathy and positive attention.

I finally fell back to sleep and woke up at 7 to obsess some more. I started to feel like maybe I was sick too, and wondering what would happen if I puked or fainted at the airport, whether we’d have a problem getting through immigration with Blind Boy, and where Aliya would put the zip-lock bag I was going to make her carry in case she needed to puke (the only outfit she had left didn’t have pockets). I decided that if there was ever a time to take one of my public-speaking pills, this was it, and I felt much better. I got everyone ready to go, the 9 big bags and 6 carry-ons were loaded into the car, the crying commenced, and we were on our way.

To enter the airport in Casablanca, you have to go through a metal detector, and each bag is scanned. I’ll give them credit…they picked out one particular bag and asked me to take it to a security guy. I didn’t realize when I purchased the key to the castle in Marrakech (I’ve just got to find the right castle), that it looks very much like a gun on an x-ray, especially when jumbled up with a bunch of locks. I pulled it out to show him…I think he must have thought it was some sort of a test because I would be the last person he’d expect to have a gun in their luggage. He seemed relieved, and then sent me to another group of security guys to show them. They told us that we’d have to check it and couldn’t take it in a carry-on, which was my plan anyway.

At the next security station I tried to ply them with my best Arabic so they wouldn’t dig around too much in our bags. I didn’t have any contraband but it had taken me days to get it all situated and I didn’t want to have to unwrap anything. We had a ton of food that the aunties were sending home to my nieces and sister-in-law here, which is really heavy. The security guy pulled out one package and I told him it was “shebekkia,” which is like a type of cookie. With a totally straight face he said that I couldn’t take shebekkia out of Morocco. I wasn’t buying it, because we had done it before. Then he asked if I liked shebekkia, I lied and said yes, and he said, that it was ok for me to take it. I have not met many Moroccan security guys with a sense of humor.

We didn’t have a scale at home to weigh the bags, but only one turned out to be more than a kilogram overweight, so I pulled out a bucket of shebekkia and turned it into a 7th carry-on. I got the boarding passes and was shocked to see that the boarding time was 12:10, for a 2 p.m. flight. As it turns out, there was a time change in Morocco at the start of Ramadan, which for some reason also changed the departure time to one hour earlier (I think this is related to the fact that the date of Ramadan isn’t known ahead of time so the time on our ticket was the pre-change time). Luckily we had left a cushion, because by the time I filled out the immigration forms, got Blind Boy, Vomit Girl, and the Faker through another security check and to the gate, the plane was boarding. Our carry-ons were examined at the gate again, but luckily the agents were my shebekkia friends from downstairs. Then I had to go behind a curtain and be frisked (Norah: “OK Mom, they’re gonna pull your pants down now.”) by a female agent. Every adult who got on the plane was given a thorough pat-down. Very thorough.

On the flight home I chatted with my neighbors across the aisle which really helped pass the time. The flight was pretty uneventful and took about 7 1/2 hours. We had lunch and then a Ramadan “breakfast,” although most people on the flight weren’t fasting. You’re not required to fast if you’re traveling. Immigration and customs went smoothly, we found a porter to help with our 9 bags, got on the parking shuttle, fought for my 20% corporate discount on parking ($280 for 3 weeks), and two of the parking guys loaded all of the bags into the car including the two strapped onto the roof. That was unexpected and awesome.

The traffic wasn’t bad and we got out of NYC with no problem. We decided to stop for dinner because it had been such a long day and we needed a break, and we ended up in Westport, Connecticut. Dinner was great, and we were back on the road by 9. It was at that point that I realized that by the time we got home at 11:30 p.m., it would be 3:30 a.m. Morocco-time. Driving the last couple of hours was h*ll. I drove while Ben napped, and then Ben drove the last hour or so. We hauled bags and kids into the house and passed out.

This morning I woke up and realized that the cat was missing. We looked everywhere for her and she definitely wasn’t in the house. I couldn’t handle another unexplained cat death and I was just praying I wasn’t going to find her remains locked in somewhere. I finally found her tonight outside. I don’t know how long she had been out there but she was not happy.

Ben did a lot of the unpacking while I worked today, and we’re getting back into the groove. We’re very happy that yesterday’s long journey is over but we miss our peeps and the pace of Morocco. Maybe we won’t be able to wait until 2014 to go back.

My key to the castle: