How many Moroccans does it take to get someone out of a locked bathroom? Sadly, I know that answer… it was four. One to shout directions to me in Arabic from the other side of the door, one to start tearing the jam down with a crowbar, and two to watch.
I spent the weekend with three of my housemates on a jaunt to the Sahara to ride camels and sleep under the stars… well, not exactly under the stars, as we were in a tent, but pretty darn close. It’s hard to describe how magical the camel ride was and the sleeping out in the desert in the middle of nowhere, but I have to admit, when I returned to the house tonight, the first story that came out was me getting stuck in the small bathroom in my hotel room.
Because it was a 10-hour drive from Rabat to where we would ride camels and camp in the Sahara, we arrived pretty late, so we stayed in a local hotel, where we would board our camels the following day for our trek to the campsite. The bathroom door lock was not functioning properly from the beginning, and I wouldn’t have even used it except that it was the only way the door would shut, and I felt it was a courtesy to Mimi, my roommate for the evening.
Shortly after breakfast, I returned to the room to get my things, used the bathroom to get ready for the trek, and when I tried to unlock the door, it wouldn’t budge. I fiddled around with it for a few minutes when Simone (one of the other girls I was traveling with) knocked on the door to tell me they were ready to go. When I told her I couldn’t get out, I heard her go down the hall shouting “….uh….we’re going to need some help here…” And that is when the four Moroccan men showed up and started shouting directions to me in Arabic. I wasn’t having any luck explaining to them that it wasn’t the door handle that was jammed, but the lock below it (honestly, I don’t know why I said anything, as they couldn’t understand a word I was saying). I was in there a good 15 minutes before I saw a crow bar rip apart the door jam to free the lock.
I was starting to panic a bit, as the bathroom was very small and I wasn’t sure exactly how they were going to free the lock, short of knocking the door down. When the door was finally opened, and I saw the damage to the jam, I looked at them with a thankful, yet oh so apologetic look, and they just shrugged their shoulders and smiled as if to say…”No problem, it happens all the time…” (which I’m sure is not far from the truth).
I was leery of bathroom doors with funky locks the rest of the weekend… and that included most of the ones I saw. Between trying to hold the door shut with my foot and leaning forward to keep it shut with my hand, I decided the easiest (and safest) route was to let it swing open and forgo privacy, which I did. Fortunately, it seemed to hit the public bathrooms, not the others.
After a weekend of magic in the desert with a camel trek, a full moon, and a night under the stars, honestly, it was the getting locked in the bathroom story that came out first to my housemates once home.
The rest of the weekend, I’m savoring and will share in pieces…
