The light is gentle over Tangier as I see it below me from the window of cafe Cherifa. First the Medina underneath, with its muchness of rooftops and round satellite discs and clothes hung up to dry. Behind it on the hill the newer houses grow up and wrap themselves around the old city. Seagulls fly leisurely over the mess of houses just as the flies circle inside the cafe. The sky is soft and cloudy. I am here to write.

My last day of the year has been these hours at the cafe, writing, drinking tea and listening to the choir that came by and filled the room with voices, clapping hands and laughter. The music found me here even though I didn’t look for it, and I hope it does so all through the next year. I hope I will have good health and that I will keep meeting the same kindness that I have been blessed with so far. I hope to have the energy and focus for expression and creativity. I hope to be soft and loving to myself, unconditionally listening to and honoring my boundaries and wishes.

This is how I spend the final hours of this year. I think of the saying, from my Russian side I think, that one will spend the new year as one spends the last night of the old year. I like this idea.

I have not yet told my friends at the cafe that I will be leaving to Casablanca the day after tomorrow. I have barely understood it myself; there is a little jerk of surprise as I date my current writing to the 31^st, a realization that more than a month has passed since my arrival here and it doesn’t even feel like that long.

…

One night I get drunk on whiskey in a public square with a new friend, a Canadian-Moroccan artist/writer/researcher with a carefully gentle and playful disposition. I have brought my speaker so we can listen to his favorite artist in a fair way. We then glide into Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald and I have my best dance in Morocco so far to “Mack the knife”. Then the battery of my phone runs out and both our screens are black. Our conversation jumps unfaithfully between topics like poets, writers, break-ups, growing up, home-cultures and I bask in this other way to be home; feeling utterly free in a common language, sharing a basis of culture and values. Later I remember nothing of what I have said, only a sense of urgency as the words left my mouth and a cognitive effortlessness not having to take detours of translation.

…

Other times I have gone to other restaurants or cafes with people I meet through hostels, Couchsurfing or even Tinder. Other tourists and expats who tell me about itineraries they go through at dizzying speed, the tickets they’ve booked to far away places, the places they have “done” and things they have tried. The contrasts give me vertigo; I can spend a morning in a cafe at a shopping center where I pay 40 dirham for a vegan latte and I indulge in it more maybe to show to my company that I am in the same social group and that somehow the pricing and the setting is realistic for me. Then I say good-bye, walk for half an hour and climb the stairs up to the Kasbah, turn into side streets like any one of the little cats, duck into a small room under the other apartments in a side street so tiny that one would have to press one’s back and shoulders to the houses should one meet someone else. Here, 40 dirham will buy us a good dinner for four, five, even six people.

…

My Cameroonian friends left for Agadir already over a week ago and the city is not the same for me without them here. I did not count the times I was let into Jonas’ small, cozy room where we sat around the table and where I mostly assumed the role of a listener, synapses firing wildly while trying to make mine the meaning expressed in French.

How many nights, how many hours have I spent here, in this small room? I was learning my lessons about hiding before when I was sleeping in the parks. Despite doing so for only a few weeks I already feel affected and different. I can not imagine hiding like this for several years, ducking the police, even living on the streets like many of my friends here have grown up doing.

…

I decide to take the train to Casablanca and I don’t book a ticket. I have found a host through Couchsurfing and I have a job waiting for me, a place to volunteer. That is all. In the morning I will simply wake up early and go to the train station and see what I can get. It will work.

…

Outside my room one of the mothers speaks on the phone, the one who has the cute little boy. I don’t understand her language and often I find her voice to be hard and agitated. Now, too, she speaks harshly and with a lot of intonation. It makes me tense but I don’t know her, so I don’t know what her mannerisms mean. I know nothing of her life or conditions even though we life on the same floor, but I do like the boy. He is sweet and charming. He likes to open my door and check in on me, see what I’m doing. He is two or three maybe, not quite walking with confidence and thus not discouraged when he meets the ground. We play peekaboo or he will offer me clumsily whatever he is snacking on, some chips or bread. He always smiles and laughs and he speaks a lot with everyone in his own baby-language. Everyone loves him and I know that I will miss him dearly.

…

I am learning to meet people every time as if it was the last time.

…

I make sure to do everything I can during my last days. I meet Hodriguez, one of my Cameroonian friends who is also a dancer and a hairdresser and I ask him to cut my hair. We chat with difficulty; he speaks no English. In the end we never made a choreography together. He is disappointed and I too feel sad. Afterwards I meet up with Junior, the artist, and our conversation is smoother.
“Tu vais nos manquer,” he says to me before we part. We will miss you.
I don’t doubt him but I wish it wasn’t so. The French for “I will miss you too” doesn’t come to me fast enough so I just answer in English as I hug him close, his leather jacket stiff and creaking in my ear.

…

On the last day I take a walk and I leave small, pretty rocks around the town. I mark all the places that have been good to me and where I wish to leave a little blessing; the terrace where I first met Joël and later got drunk with Youniss; outside of Jonas’ door on which I’ve knocked the code so many times; on Joël’s windowsill facing the tiny, tiny street; by the Spanish door facing the sea on which I came; the hostel that first so gently received me; the terrace of my house where I come to stretch and dance. My way to say good-bye is to imagine that I will be back; that I am not and will never leave.

…

It is still dark when I wake up on the morning that I leave. There is no reason to hurry but I don’t have too many things to pack so the process is quick anyway. The last thing to do is to knock on Blessing’s door and hand her back the things she’s lent me: the pot, the cutlery, cup and plate. My gas I am leaving to my other friend, the young mother. She asked me for it, but I would have left it for her anyway. Blessing wraps herself in a gown as she opens and automatically reaches out her hands for the things, eyes open but not quite awake. I thank her for everything and tell her good-bye. As I close the door to my room she comes out again and locks her door behind her.
“Let’s go,” she says. She has decided to come with me and despite my reassurance that she doesn’t need to, she follows me out into the cold and dark street, still only in her dressing gown.

We walk together to the station. It’s a good 40 minute walk. I am happy to have company. Blessing tells me that this is the road she always takes to work every morning. I take the chance to listen to her for the last time. I enjoy her Nigerian dialect, her deep and steady voice. Whether she speaks, sings or teaches at church, her voice is like a steady pillar.

I buy my ticket at the station and we wait together for an hour. I tell her she doesn’t have to, just to give her an option, but I also believe that waiting like this is truly no trouble for her. So many African friends have spent so many hours with me, waiting with nothing to do. When I leave for my train, she hugs me and heads back. The sun is high now, it’s around 11 when I step out onto the sunny platforms. I don’t know what awaits but I am not afraid. It feels like I’m just on time.

…

(This story told in pictures.)