Postcard #01 • A Secret Just For Us

In Morocco, Christmas smelled of salt and diesel

Christmas morning — Essaouira, Morocco

I smelled the boat before I heard it: the salty, sour, oppressive tang of fish guts. I choked on my breath. Does nobody else smell this? I scanned the dock for someone else wrinkling their nose, only to find everyone breathing normally. So, I too pretended that sour diesel belonged in my lungs just as much as any other air.

I heard the boat before I saw it. A fear of birds made sudden sense as I ducked below hundreds of seagulls shrieking and colliding, wings slicing so close that I felt the slap of their feathers against my ear.

After the stench, and the birds, rested the boat. Fishermen sprayed down the dock and picked at the blood-red net. My lips curled into a smirk. If I was going to spend Christmas in Morocco, it would be here.

When I told people that I would spend Christmas in Morocco — a country that didn’t celebrate Christmas — I fielded blank stares and gentle protests.

How about the Christmas markets in Germany?, suggested a European friend that I’d met in Argentina.

Come with me to Rome!, offered an American soon leaving Marrakesh.

I refused. I wasn’t giddy for ornate cathedrals or twinkling markets. Instead, I craved a new Christmas — one that belonged to nobody but me, empty of ritual. I would touch the sand on December 25 and smile slyly; Christmas would be a secret I’d whisper only to those I chose to share it with.

At the dock, I didn’t hear Christmas — just the daily percussion of bargaining and food scales. I dangled my feet over the Atlantic. Seagulls ducked and swayed while I sat atop the walls of a fortress that once protected the city.

In the evening, I whispered Merry Christmas to friends across an open-air dinner table, feet planted on a cobblestone walkway. We shared tagines filled with chicken and lamb before exchanging tiny trinkets we’d discovered in the medina. On our walk home, we spotted tinsel and plastic Christmas trees strung outside an innocent basement bar. Christmas… in Morocco?, we said to each other. I looked through the doorway, and Essaouira blurred.

We giggled past the mistletoe and drank shots with a man in a pirate costume, feet stomping along to live reggae music with strangers.

Sheltered in this basement, I shouted: Merry Christmas! — a secret just for us.

Postcards is a (new) series of micro-essays from the places I’ve once called home, each shaped by a photo. If you’re looking for more, explore my longer essays: on climbing a mountain in Nepal, why some strangers are kind, my Eritrean heritage, and saying goodbye.