Morocco is only the second outside of the US that I have been to, the other being China. Early on in the trip, I decided that a life goal of mine would be to have a chess board from every country I spend time in. I already had one from the US and from China, so of course I would need one from Morocco as well. A chess set, I decided, was also going to be the only souvenir I brought back for myself.
I started looking for one on the Sahara trip. We stopped at a rest-station outside of Tamgroute that sold heavy, stone boards, with solid pieces of granite and quartz. In Essaouira, I saw an interesting board that if you twisted revealed four compartments underneath that you could use to hold the pieces. It was large, though, and I wanted something practical, and the pieces were nothing special. It was at this shop, however, I asked the man what Moroccans call chess. He told me it was called “Dama.”
I almost forgot about my set desires until I reached Fez, when I was walking down a street with Ryan, Sam, Daniela, and Hannah, looking for a bookstore. All four of them knew about my desire for a chess set, and Ryan innocuously said, “Chess.” I looked to where he was pointing and saw several, arranged out of a small hanout. I can’t explain specifically why I chose the one I did. It looked like most of the other sets I had seen, was even a little chipped in some places, but for some reason it seemed perfect. The board was a small and thick, made out of solid wood, and the pieces were white and lacquered. As I looked, the mudir told me he had hand carved the pieces. The board folds up into a box, with back-gammon set on the inside, and the box has a small, golden clasp to keep it together. I smelled the pieces, and it reminded me of carpentry classes in middle school. I paid the main 150 dirhams, which my host-mother would later tell me was too much.
I spent the first afternoon with the set teaching Daniela to play chess. I explained the pieces to her, then told her some of the basic strategies. I remembered some of the things my teacher in fifth grade, Mr. Broder, had told me, and passed them on to her. Then, we started playing, and I had her talk out each of her moves with me. She’s a quick learner, and she grasps the fundamentals and strategy well. We’re still playing her first game, off and on.
When I went home, I showed Halima the new set, telling her I had bought Dama in broken derijja. After heckling me about the price, we went about our day, and I thought she had forgotten about the chess set until a few days later, when I got back from a trip to Meknes. When I got home, I found out that her brother, who we both call Hajj, was visiting for the week. I sat with him talked a little, and then started doing some homework. After a while, I heard Halima say something about “Dama,” and I looked up in interest. After they talked, Hajj came and sat at the table with me. “Urrid laib dama?” (Do you want to play dama?) he asked. “Iyyeh,” I said, and stood to get the set.
From what I can tell, Hajj is the older sibling. One night, while he was praying, Halima told me that he lives in Casablanca, so that he can be near his doctor. Much of Hajj’s left leg is gone, the result of being hit by a car, with only the bone left in his lower leg, and a scar that still bleeds from time to time. When Hajj prays, he cannot kneel, and so has to sit in a chair. Halima told me that he only comes to Fez to visit her, but made a hand motion like she thinks it’s silly. Still, I can see that the two have a lot of affection for each other, and both have a roaring sense of humor. On his last night in Fez, Halima asked me if I wanted tea, and when I said I did, berated me about why I hadn’t asked her first. Once she had left the room, Hajj turned in the couch and looked at me very seriously, and in a loud voice, speaking Arabic, said, “Always wait until she asks you for tea, so that you’re not disturbing her.” Halima immediately said “Hajj” twice in a tone of voice that said “shut up,” and I started laughing because I understood everything that was happening, a rarity for me. Hajj started laughing, and Halima did her best to hide her smile, until Hajj started calling me a thief, which has become the common joke in the house.
Getting ready to play dama, he commented that my set was beautiful, and he smelled the pieces, just as I had. Once they were all out of the box, he grabbed the white pieces and I grabbed the black, and I started setting up for chess. When I finished, I looked up to see that he had set up in a completely different way, and one that didn’t make sense to me. His rook was three spaces forward, and he had some pawns positioned on his back row. Most importantly, he only had pieces on the black spaces. He was looking at my arrangement, equally perplexed, and finally I asked, “Tarif dama?” (Do you know dama). “Iyyeh,” he replied, “walakin, hada la dama, hada sheque.” (This isn’t dama, this is sheque). I was confused, and then he started moving his pieces to demonstrate what he meant; he was talking about checkers. I laughed, and he shook my hand, smiling, and then we set up the pieces like they were for checkers, since he didn’t seem to want to play chess.
What was interesting to me was the miscommunication that happened through all of this. The man in Essaouira, when I pointed to the board, must of thought I was asking what the board was called, which is why he told me ‘dama’ the word for checkers. That stuck in my mind until I told it to Halima, who never actually saw the pieces I had bought. She then told Hajj, who assumed I must know checkers, and so when he sat down to play, he didn’t even question why the pieces looked different. I was only able to figure out the word for chess because ‘sheque’ sounds a little like ‘check,’ and I know that many languages use that as the name for the game.
Hajj and I played a total of ten games during his week in Fez. The first game, he easily trounced me. I beat him in the rest of the games, and Halima laughed at Hajj’s mutterings.