Heil Apfelfuhrer

Heil Apfelfuhrer
Why am I subjected to such extremes around here?
In other times and places it often seemed that things naturally homogenized; here things seem to hold balance by remaining equally divided at the opposite ends of my mind.
If you’ve been patient enough to keep reading, thank you, and here is the answer to the first, obvious question… Apfelfuhrer was a short-lived anti-Nazi movement which sprang up in Germany a few years ago in response to an even shorter-lived Nazi revival. Rather than a black swastika in the center of their red flag, the group used an apple as their symbol. Why? I suppose it’s about as ridiculous a thing to salute as a swastika. The whole intent was to bring down the neo-Nazis by mocking them with farcical uniforms and flags. It worked. Way to be.
Now why bring it up? Because people around here constantly keep me on my toes by either being shockingly wonderful or bafflingly awful. And, I suppose, it’s only different from other places because, here people constantly feel the need to remind me how lovely and welcoming all the people are here… all the people are here. Sometimes, yeah…
(And maybe this is just a little down-time sour grapes… This scale I’ve described really doesn’t include the few honestly great friends I’ve made around here… people I will think about always; and I’m grateful for that. This scale is more for the nameless people in the background who, unlike in other places, just don’t seem to stay in the background and be nice and neutral. Everyone has to be on one side or the other, and that’s the odd thing.)
So without prices posted on most everything, the "tourists," whether speaking native-languages or not, pay more for things. Sometimes we put up a fight and I feel like Mike Huckabee (or whoever it is these days) arguing for a flat sales tax because "it’s fair" that everyone pay the same thing. Maybe I am better off, but it still feels slimy and racist to charge people more because of their appearance and estimated net worth (estimated by appearance). And, surprise, it recently happened… I paid some little kid (maybe 11 or 12) the normal five dirhams for a sandwich and he insisted on two more. One more, I might have believed, but still, I was about to let it slide and handed him another 5 asking for my change. When I saw the smirk on his face, after his big score, I pushed the sandwich back on the counter, threw the change on the floor and walked away. Petty, perhaps; but for the kid it was probably his lucky day…he got ten dirham and a sandwich, just for trying to get away with one on me.
I went over to a café to get a coffee, since it looked like I wouldn’t be eating lunch that day. As to not pay another tourist rate, I asked how much the coffee was beforehand. Another kid waiter didn’t understand my Berber, I tried in Arabic, I tried in French, I tried in Arabic again, I tried in Berber again and we were both about to give up when another man at the café stepped in to save me… and I was given the fair price of five dirhams. After the coffee arrived, our translator offered me some dates that he and his family were sharing. And again, I was overcome with this wonder about this question of everyone being so delightful or not. It was pretty nice of this guy to help me translate a bit and then share the dates with just some tourist and his giant backpack.
So then I got on the bus and knocked out soon enough. I woke up and saw the high school-aged kid across from me studying from a book he had drawn a big swastika on. My first reaction was to start yelling, perhaps ask him if he had anything to say or do… as long as I was "right here." I reeled it in though. My guess is that this guy didn’t really want me and my family dead. I seem to have gathered up enough evidence to support the theory that many people around here have next to no idea about what happened during the Nazi years and probably use it more as an anti-Israel (as opposed to anti-Jewish) than anything else… not that I love seeing it.
The other problem is, of course, that if I’m off "picking fights," not that carrying swastikas isn’t already asking for a fight, I’d sorta become exactly what they think I am: a Jewish stone-cold killin’ machine. (Take that Woody Allen stereotype!) So, I just went back to sleep wondering why this guy is so welcoming and what he actually meant by his swastika.
So then it was break-time on the bus. We stopped by some roadside fruit stands in a roadside town. I stepped out for some fresh air and saw one of the fruit vendors from one of my last trips home from Marrakech. He got up and offered me the crate he was sitting on. We spoke for a second in Arabic and as I was about to run out of words he asked that we switch to French so he could practice. That slightly improves my vocabulary.
I told him about the work I’d been doing in ‘Kech and he asked about New York, etc. After a few seconds he offered me an apple or two (for free obviously), we ate, he excitedly introduced me to another worker there as a guy who speaks Berber. They were both excited; it’s a common scene.
The bus honked its horn, break-time was over, I said goodbye to my new friends and sat back down on the bus across from the Nazi. And that’s when I thought of the apfelfuhrer thing.
Is that a good conclusion for the story? I wish I could say that things all worked out in the end. I guess they did in the sense that life just goes on. I don’t think anyone learned a valuable lesson. I think everyone involved is exactly the same.
So since none of us are any bit the better off, I’ll just say a danke scheone to the apfelfuhrer crowd. There’re some people who I can say were going out of their way to do it right. Heil Apfelfuhrer!