You cannot bury your own hands.

the memory of hands.

Oct 07, 2024

It was a pair of hands that persuaded me to go to Morocco. Influencer marketing was so simple in 2018. My friend and I were halfway into a vlog from our favourite travel YouTuber trailing through the medina of Marrakech before we paused it, checked flight prices, and decided that we would book a flight to see Morocco for ourselves. The culture, the promise of flavourful tagines, the excitement of visiting the African continent for the first time, were all excellent reasons to enliven the imagination, but it was not what placed Morocco at the top of my to-visit list.

Something about the presentation of a pair of hands helps us see the deeper self. Someone trained can take a look at the hands and know immediately how the person’s circulation is, or their thyroid and hormone health. Others can tell how honest, wealthy, or youthful one is based on examination of a palm. Hands carry information. A hand made heavy, one country at a time, is trusted with more than jewellery. Those are called travel hands. Travel hands — or vagabond hands— are ones with rings that slide onto each finger, rarely scantily, usually bought and now worn around the world.

Travel hands are ageless storytellers, versed in many languages and weathers. They are loud even if we are quiet. Whenever I see them, I feel advised of the way the wearer handles life. I feel more than encouraged that they go far for themselves or have learned something from where they have been. Glimpsing a pair of travel hands in Morocco prompted a trip to place new memories in my own.

Morocco offered us a new level of market culture and presented bartering in the highest, most esteemed light that I think my grandmother would appreciate. Our time was split between Rabat and Marrakech, and of the days spent in the red-walled city, the art of negotiation was playfully brought to life. Sometimes the playfulness was unending and I would wish to slip through the souks unspoken to, feeling overstimulated and ready to enter rest mode, somehow, in our riad located slap bang in the middle of it all. Other times, I felt called to become a woman who knows what she wants, asks for it, leaves with it.

My vagabond hands remember Marrakech especially. I am now fistfuls of Morocco, Spain, Cuba, Mexico and others. I scarcely forget to visit a market or street artisan to carry a new country with me. The eclectic arrangement makes for a better travel hand, so I usually seek out different styles and sizes. I would call it tradition but it seems to want a different word. A ritual of remembering, an adorning of and for the self. The performance of ring-wearing as cherishing all where you have been, all who you have held by hand, heart, more. In Marrakech, many hands understand this. Hands to eat with, hands to source and sift spices, hands to maneuver through thick city traffic, hands to pour tea at enviable heights, all full of stories.

On our last night, we came across a tucked-away merchant, almost an anomaly from the perfectly organised market divisions. We walked in, oud-scented and curious for some more Moroccan buys. What we found were two things quite unexpected: 1) more jewellery items we thought our eyes had grown used to adoring, and 2) a quite-drunk elderly man, in between slumber and extrovertedness. I was called by a single pendant, a silver one. It was the shape of the African continent and had some engravings on it. In a sentence, we left after a 45-minute negotiation (not because of the bartering, but because of the alcoholic storytelling and other dramatics).

We walked out, a little exhausted and me, personally unsure if the pendant was worth it. I clung to this new piece of jewellery anyway and thanked my friend for going through that with me, said that I would buy a silver chain to remember this season of spontaneity. I lost it somewhere between the train journey to Rabat and England. (I believe when something is not meant to be owned by you, particularly a piece of jewellery, this happens. Once, I shattered a jade ring I bought in Antigua, Guatemala, seconds after buying it. I had to give thanks, for the protection).

It was not supposed to be. It was a reminder, that the memories like to live on my hands.

The Morocco trip was timed just before starting my first full-time post-graduate job. When my employer asked if I had any trips planned, I nodded eagerly, blocked out my calendar, vowed to be unavailable to reorient myself to freedom before an open-plan office, an in-office mini bar and a quarterly ‘duvet day’ was presented to me as my new freedoms.

Sipping on orange juice freshly squeezed before my eyes - every morning, twice sometimes, slinging my camera over my shoulder, capturing everything my senses were alert to, offering a ‘shukran’ as plentifully as I could, cackling with taxi drivers who told us they were giving us the ‘African global price’ rather than the tourist price, sitting on rooftops and hearing a myriad of voices, cats, the call to prayer come sundown, the rhythm of drums come nightfall - all of it was welcomed. These simple interruptions can help us gather who we are and what we like to live for. I have travelled and collected many things: postcards with the names and dates of people I have travelled with, things to dress my home in, books, and rings that I reach for daily.

I buried a lot of things when working in an office. My preferred fashion style for the sake of office wear, writing, the strong opinions that may cost me employability, other things. Later I was able to retrieve those things but I did not bury my hands. My travel hands reminded me that I was committed to many places. Heirlooms transcend burials because they are memoried and have valuable work to do where they are seen.

My hands are older than me, in a way. They know and have seen things that I have not. They are attracted to tiger’s eye, citrine, gold. They are attractive for those who want to wander. They speak to family and strangers alike. I like this a lot of the time. When my hands are clenched, when they are being held, when they fumble, when they immediately know, when I am reaching, I am aware constantly that I am new and journeying. And to be journeying, in any capacity, means to be unwilling to release the memories that matter most. The hands are often our principal teachers in how to hold tightly to what is meaningful.

There is always something that remains, a part of you that cannot be buried. I’m glad that Morocco revealed that I would not be able to bury my nature, which is my curiosity, which is what we all name differently. To me, it is the vagabond within, to another, some other word. And still, we know what we need to keep unconcealed and in sight, always, so we can remain guided.

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Until the next letter.

Love,

Amara Amaryah

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You cannot bury your own hands.

the memory of hands.

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