Taking the ferry between Tangier, Morocco and Tarifa, Spain is remarkably easy and fast. The trip between two continents and two worlds is only a 35 minute brisk ride across the Strait of Gibraltar and once on the other side, the other-other side remains a hazy outline in the horizon.
To travelers, it’s a godsend -a convenient way to hop across continents to explore a different culture in just over half an hour. In our high-speed/ ADD, internet dominated society, sitting in an air-conditioned luxury cabin including a decent cafeteria and duty-free shop and entertained by fragrance commercials of frolicking beauties for 35 minutes is an incredibly convenient and doable way to experience the exotic.
Many travel agencies in Spain offer weekend trips to Morocco. Most even offer day trips to Tangier. Spend the day in a Muslim country but sleep in the comforts and conveniences of a western one.
At the customs desks, my mom and I sailed through with our American passports.
At the ropes separating those leaving the country from those staying, (a.k.a. those with passports and those without), a middle-aged Moroccan man grimaced and brusquely swept away his tears, while his son looked away with bleary eyes, and his hijab-donning wife cried freely on him.
Another man, maybe his brother or a friend gently but firmly held the wife back while the man, with his Moroccan passport in his left hand placed his right hand on his wife’s shoulder as the deep creases in his too-young face tightened in a final bid adieu before stepping beyond the ropes.
Morocco is plagued by high unemployment (my professor likes to call it “serious hanging out”) and widespread poverty. Many Moroccans have college degrees but still beg on the streets. Every day in Spanish news, especially in Andalucia, you hear tragic stories of illegal Moroccan emigrants washing up on shore after drowning in the sea on precarious patera boats. It is not only extremely difficult to obtain a visa to work or study abroad, but it is also often difficult to even acquire a passport. The deck of our ferry had a direct view of the port where Moroccan youth spend all day every day smoking and watching port-traffic.
This scene is a common one in stories of the emigrant experience. It reminded me of my own father leaving us in Los Angeles since I was twelve years old to work in Seoul to support the family.
However, a fundamental difference is the intensity of our farewells. When my dad leaves, my brother and I barely roll out of bed to wish him a safe a trip and send him off to the airport with a gruff hug. My mom will accompany him, and we’ll crawl back into bed not worrying when we’ll see him next.
We know he’ll be back in a few months. We’ll e-mail or call every so often. It’s no big deal. It’s been more than seven years since this coming and going has gone on.
As I witnessed this scene at Tangier customs, I wondered when this man would ever see his family again. Perhaps this was his first time away from home? Perhaps this was the first time he was abroad? Or perhaps, he was going for a long time, and he didn’t know when he would be back.
When my dad leaves to Seoul, he is in a sense going back home. Though he is very much Americanized, Korea is still his birthplace and his homeland. He is going somewhere where there will be no language barriers and where he will find familiar food and faces. It’s still very hard to have our family separated, but at least he is somewhat at home.
It was a little bit strange to be on this ferry filled with Americans, Spaniards, French, and Germans-all tourists who mostly when they got on the boat didn’t take a second look back at Tangier and settled into plush chairs inside the air-conditioned cabin.
Then there were the Moroccans-mostly men and mostly young to middle-aged. Instead of walking into the cabin, most of them stood silently on the small deck smoking cigarettes and leaning over the rails as if their Moroccan blood was pulling them back to squint through the hot sun back at Tangier.
Before departing, a loudspeaker directed the passengers with safety precautions in English, French, and Spanish. When my mom went to buy an orange juice at the cafeteria, they assured her that they only took euros.
As we pulled away from the port, many tourists came out to the small deck to wave good-bye and take a few pictures as the tallest minaret faded into the distance. Some of the Moroccan men took out their camera phones and took pictures of themselves and the wide expanse of ocean behind them, but most of them just stood silently leaning over the rails for the 35 minutes until we reached Spain.
