The train station in Meknes reminded me a bit of the station in Cefalu, Sicily:
a clean and modern structure rife with architectural touches peculiar to the
local culture, set alongside two pairs of rails that went sweeping around the
bend to adventure in each direction.  Even the trains are similar:
compartmentalized cabins with side corridors, official vendors pushing wheeled
snack carts, and outside the window, endless  olive fields and hedge rows.
Traveling by train in Morocco is pleasant and easy, and provided you can get a
seat in one of the overfull 2nd class compartments, quite comfortable.

We were fortunate to squeeze into a compartment then, because the train had
begun in Fes, and was already nearly full when it pulled up to Meknes with a
screech. We found seats in an 8 person compartment with 6 others traveling
north from Fes, and settled in for the long ride to Tangier along the coast.


To my right was a taciturn gentleman hunched into the corner, to my left a
young man clutching a folded paper sack, and then a dark haired woman leaning
against the window on a hand with a large silver ring.  Across from me were an
older woman dressed in an elegant, tiger-print djellaba whose hands were so
hennaed they looked like lace gloves, a younger woman in jeans and a head
scarf, as well as a woman with silver-framed glasses and her hair loose.
Already, this was quite an example of the diversity we experienced throughout
Morocco.

After a couple of silent kilometers and polite nods the young man opened the
sack, revealing roasted cashews and pistachios, and offered them around.  And
then suddenly everyone was sharing.  The young woman across the way had a bag
of sweet tangerines, the older woman passed around some shortbread cookies I
thought she had probably made herself, and Ericka and I shared the bag of dried
apricots and fresh dates we had bought in Morocco.  Then when the gentleman -
Kisra was his name - noticed the book from which I was learning Arabic, he
immediately took interest and patiently coached me through the  lessons (I had
been working on Arabic since before the trip began and was glad we didn't have
to start at the bare beginning of the lessons).  He turned out to be a natural
and effective teacher.  The women giggled at my inability to differentiate
between some of the less intuitive sounds.

Before long, music was playing through a cellphone with an external speaker and
we were sharing flat bread and boiled eggs and the rest of the food we had all
brought, never suspecting we would share it with strangers. Ericka and I both
speak fluent French, but the young woman knew quite a bit of English, and they
all spoke a little Spanish (we had noticed in Marrakesh that Moroccans speak a
number of languages rather effortlessly, particularly in the market place).
Before long, we were exchanging addresses and becoming friends.

Employees of governments everywhere are coached endlessly about the value of
public diplomacy and the importance of representing the best their nation has
to offer.  But diplomacy, which is to say the act of representing your own
culture while learning about another, is much more the responsibility of
ordinary, traveling citizens than the official duties of government employees
(in fact, official functions lead inevitably and universally to bureaucracy,
which is not the best of what any culture has to offer but is sadly,
inevitable).  Rather, the interface between cultures and the growth of shared
understanding among them happens in a crowded 2nd class compartment over a bag
of tangerines, as a Moroccan learns Americans do want to learn Arabic and an
American learns Muslims are far more varied than the extremists that make the
evening news, and everyone learns about a place called Nicaragua, which doesn't
ever make the news in North Africa but perhaps should, because at least one
Nicaraguan and one Moroccan found out they had lots to talk about.  And as for
official diplomacy, perhaps we had a first glimpse of Morocco at the consulate,
where we were treated very well by the warm and generous Consul and his wife.
But their ordinary compatriots back home were  diplomats in the true sense of
the word.