On my last day in Marrakech, I went to a cultural space to the south of the Medina. There was Saharan music at 7pm, and I got there just before and ordered some food. The sun was setting, so I went up to the roof and took photos. A woman was on another nearby roof thinking, backlit by twilight. The stained glass windows of an old building were lit up, like mellow fragments of the sunset. Behind me, a full moon watched on. Quiet, wise, bold.
I spent all of the next day flying to London, waiting at Heathrow (sitting on the floor outside a pharmacy, eating a sandwich and watching people from all parts of the world charge their phones and re-pack their bags as they too waited for their flight’s check-in to open), then flying overnight to Mexico. I got in at 3.30 am, passed through customs and security, and went to catch the 2.5-hour bus to Puebla. The first one left at 5.15. As it sped along the single highway between Mexico City and Puebla, I saw her again. A big full moon. Following the bus, still bold, unbudging, confident, unapologetic.
New Year was coming up. In Mexico, people spend it with their families, and I didn’t have my own one. But if families are groups of people sharing a home, there were lots of other spaces, communities, causes, and a planet, that I shared with others. In my head, or really in my heart, I made a list.
There was the six-hour family of five people sharing the cabin in the train from Fes to Marrakech. The man opposite me stretching out his legs, and telling me I could stretch mine out next to his. The other man, older, checking with everyone before he pulled the blind down to block out the strong sun. There is my building family and that day just before I left when the water to our cistern was leaking and spraying everywhere, and we ran out of our homes in our pyjamas or whatever we threw on, and collected the water in buckets. There was the work family back in Ecuador, and our meetings about the night shift and other working conditions. There is my Puebla city family, sharing frustration at the abusive private water company. There is a migrant family, with a shared understanding of the anguish of being othered. There are movement families, and Karuzo Bar and La Terminal cantina families. There’s the Facebook writer’s group, always ready to offer advice and share news, and the Mexican freelance journalist organisation, where we look out for our safety. There’s a family of women – just women and nb folks everywhere who share traumas and demands and dreams, and a Latin American family, a Global South family, and a World family.
The moon held its place by the top corner of the bus window. Firm, bright.
resistance words 