Friend of my friend...

Today I had a great pleasure to discover another amazing thing about Moroccan culture. I spent a wonderful evening with Souhail's family, and then with his friends. I enjoyed every minute, even though most of the time people were speaking in Moroccan Arabic, or French, so I didn't understand majority of what they were saying. However that was definitely one of the warmest and most friendly evenings in my life. In terms of atmosphere, relax and also sense of humor, there's no one better than Moroccans in the world. They have the first place in my ranking and in my opinion should receive Nobel's Peace Prize :)
/off-thought: maybe this is why they say "Salaam" as a greeting which means literally "Peace"/

So I enjoyed myself so much, that I finally got the stronger emotional connection to the mood everybody was in. For the first time I felt like a part of a situation, not only as an observer. I couldn't understand what they are saying, but I could feel the mood, and relate it to what I felt before in my life, so to finally "anchor" it somehow to my perception and emotions. I suddenly remembered how I was laughing with my best friends and how it felt, and I saw these people being in the same state of mind, and joking on the same level. It was a huge "emotional enligtment" for me...

So when coming back home with Souhail, I told him: "I wish you could experience the same that you are giving me an opportunity to live here, because I'd like you to understand how big difference it makes for me". But he replied: "I think it would not be possible". And then he explained me a lot about cultural differencies between Poland and Morocco, and it all clicked in my head together with what I've already went through here.

First, the family. Here I'm a part of Souhail's family - this is how I'm considered by its members. And it's not only "nicely said", or exaggareted to please me. It's a fact and a feeling. Staying more than 3 days at someone's flat in unusual. 3 weeks is a time given to extended family guests. But more - it's something very special. So if I'm staying that long, I'm a family. In Poland it would probably never be possible. No matter how long he'd stay, he would never be considered this way, and be that strongly connected and welcomed. He'd stay "a guest". And most probably for some frinds too, so they would not behave so spontaneously as people behave here with me.

Second, friends. Here being brought by Souhail to his circle of friends and introduced as his friend, I'm their friend. And that's it. It doesn't matter what do they think about me, what do I say, and how do they feel about me. No judgement before somebody is let in the group, if he is another friend's friend. Actually it's true, and it happened so many times in my environment in Poland that someone brought a friend and other people in the group judged him, and didn't make friends with him, because how this person appeared to be. I was telling Souhail, that if my friends meet him, they would like him a lot (bzeeef :), but actually when he told me this, I realized that the process in my head had gone like this: "I like Souhail, cuz he's nice and cool, so if I bring him to my friends they will also realize how cool he is and accept him, and even behave naturally with him". And of course the difference is in this little part "when they realize how cool is he" - because here people don't need that to accept me. Souhail brings me and that's it. Everyone is nice to me from the start. A group is not "closed".

And the last thing that we talked about is the connection between people. Souhaile tried to explain me, that Moroccans have a very strong connection with each other, no matter how far they are in any sense. It means that a Moroccan would always understand a Moroccan, even without naming things directly. They have certain ways of talking about things that only Moroccans can understand and get the point. And they strongly relate to each other in terms of feelings. I wanted to describe this thing as well, because I realized, that actually this concept is so close to something that we call or understand as some sort of an empathy. And we are striving to reach this connection with other people, but in most of cases we don't succeed. I managed to have this kind of connection with few people in my life, for example with one of my oldest friends, Johny, but it took a long time and was never perfect. And it's rather rare in Poland, because even when I meet with some people that I consider as my friends, there's still usually maybe a tiny tension or nervousness in our relation, when we sit together and joke, or talk about nothing. People keep more distance even they are friends, and it doesn't happen at all in Morocco. I was reading about the concept of "long and short distance cultures" so many times in books for social psychology, but I actually never understood how it can feel, and how little I knew about interpersonal relations in general.