"Non François," I said, trying to hurry past; you spoke again, in English.

"Are you a tourist? Are you alone?"

Your words were so direct, so naive that they stopped me. A slight young woman, pinched with anxiety as your eyes searched my face.

The answer was written on all five feet nine inches of me, from my heavy black walking shoes and khaki safari pants up to my light skin and blonde-streaked hair. Every tout and hustler in Morocco had spotted me from a block away.

"Yes," I said. "I am a tourist and alone."

"I am also a tourist and alone," you said. "I am from Fes. I am afraid. Please, can I go around the town with you?"

I must have sighed. It was rainy. I was jet-lagged. I had just spent a frustrating hour and a small fortune trying to send a fax and e-mail to the United States. I was too tired to trust my own judgment of whether you were in distress or just trying to con me. I’d only been in Morocco three days, and for every moment of those three days, I had run a gauntlet on the street of that army of unemployed men who’d become "guides." Cries of "ça va, hello lady" followed me in a nonstop chorus.

In Casablanca, a man had offered to sell me heroine as I’d stood admiring a brick clock tower. When I wandered through the marketplace sniffing at the fresh oranges, a would-be guide schemed with a juice seller to cheat me out of 80 cents. At the city hall, as my eyes swept over the dense gleam of white buildings all the way to the sea, my "official" guide kept brushing against me.

My hair, an exotic attraction in the Arab and Mediterranean world, made the harassment worse. Men passing by would stop and ask if they could have tea with me or keep me company. "Why would a beautiful woman be alone?" they’d ask. I didn’t know whether the compliment was genuine or whether they called every woman "beautiful." Anyhow I turned them down because my independence and freedom were so important, and I was afraid they would rob me of those crucial possessions. So I wondered how much of my time and mobility a helpless young woman might steal.

Your name, Wafae, suited you. Like a waif you were, thin as a stick, barely taller than my shoulder, early 20s. Although your olive skin and Arab features placed you as Moroccan, you weren’t dressed the way most women were, in traditional robes and scarves, clutching packages from the market.

You wore a long skirt, a loose sweater, mid-length coat, and neat little boots with heels. You held a vinyl briefcase. Acne riddled your face, and your hair sat stiffly, thick and dry. I couldn’t read your story from these details.

Were you a con who would lure me into a back street where I could be mugged? A terrorist with a bomb in that briefcase?

When I tell this story in America, having come back alive and whole, some people think my reaction was strange. Why didn’t I jump at this chance to get to know a "real" Moroccan? Wasn’t that one of the reasons to travel without the protective shield of a guide and a tour bus--to create openings for life and people to enter?

You, though, didn’t seem to question why I would hesitate. "Can I go around the town with you?" was a major imposition to ask a stranger. You reached for what we had in common--our vulnerability as women alone. I could think of nothing to say except "OK."

"Merci! Merci!" you said.

You moved with poise and confidence in your European clothes. The contradiction, like Morocco’s identity as a whole, was hard to interpret. Even as we began walking together, I could not let go of my doubts.

The day we met was Morocco’s Independence Day, November 18, and I had hurried to get to Rabat, figuring that the capital might have some celebration. All I saw was a flutter of pastel flags along the main streets. A shopkeeper had told me that only the anniversary of King Hassan’s coronation warrants a big celebration. The monarchy was still deemed a benign necessity, a foothold of continuity in 2,000 years of history.

As we walked along, you handed me your national ID card. It looked official, but having a card that said you were 23 did not ease my mind that you were officially truthful. While I inspected it you took out some money.

"Somebody, they took my money from my pocket yesterday," you said, counting the coins and bills slowly. "I have only 80 dirhams left." Less than$10.

OK, I thought, here comes the pitch; but no pitch followed. You shook your head, scolded yourself for being careless. Next you burrowed one slender hand in your briefcase and pulled out photos of your sisters, halting to show me each one, echoing their names with the wistfulness of a war survivor. Like me you are the youngest child, and I warmed to your pretty sisters.

"I have three sisters," I told you, then stopped because I wondered whether you would somehow use this knowledge to manipulate me.

You were a senior in college and had come to Rabat to meet with an official about changing your major from politics to international relations. I was a graduate student in international studies. You wrote poetry, and I also wrote poetry at your age. I didn’t tell you these things we had in common.

You mirrored my younger self, the girl who wanted to be taken care of, who sought approval. As a journalist, as a single woman, I had been trying to outpace that girl for years. And now, as a traveler, I had to steel myself for the rigors of the coming months. I couldn’t afford to carry such fragile baggage.

My plan for Morocco was to follow a clear tourist trail, hoping for a transitional entry to Africa, closer to Europe both geographically and culturally than the sub-Saharan regions. Visitors came to Rabat and the former capital cities of Meknes, Fes and Marrakesh to see the centuries-old Moorish architecture, the distinctive and grand gates and mosques.

Morocco’s extraordinary walls were the dominant feature. Not all were as physically imposing as the 800-year-old fortress of Rabat’s citadel, the Kasbah des Oudaias, towering over the city on a hill. Within Morocco’s many former capitals I was drawn to the walled-off original cities, the medinas, because in these maze-like centers life carries on as it has for centuries, flowing between small shops where men pound nails and sell olives, and crowded houses where women cook, clean, and tend children. Within the medinas are the walls of the houses themselves; the windows face inward to a courtyard, secluding private life from public view.

Before I left home, I’d read a book about a woman who grew up in the seclusion of a Moroccan harem in the 1940s, when the country was still a French protectorate. It seemed a romantic life even in its confinement. Men took care of her at a distance even as they defined her role, just as the country itself was guarded and exploited by the French. Within the harem, however, the women rebelled in their own way and forged a community that garnered strength even in its isolation. It reminded me a bit of my family, where my father had been the provider and my frustrated mother raised her four daughters to be independent.

Your trip to Rabat was your first venture outside the harem alone. You had never traveled anywhere without your family before; you had never been outside of Morocco. You’d planned to stay with some family friends in Rabat.

"Didn't you call them first to see if they would be home over the holiday weekend?" I asked. You hadn’t. And when you couldn't reach them, you stayed in the hotel right next to the Rabat train station, for an outrageous 250 dirhams a night--almost $30.

The hotel’s gouging was typical, yet I blamed you for not knowing enough to avoid it. Because you could read and write, you were in the privileged 10 percent of Moroccan women, and that fact just made me angry with you. I knew this anger was unreasonable, so I said nothing. I couldn’t explain then that

I dislike those females who flail through life, overtly helpless, expecting others to take care of them-- because no one, especially not I, had allowed me to be one of them.

The Kasbah des Oudaias overlooks a river estuary fanning out to the sea. You knew little about Rabat, so I read from my guidebook as we strolled the interior.

I fell into my usual stout pace to our next destination, and we grew silent amidst the dull roar of car engines on the central road. You did not complain or ask me to slow down. You sang "La Bamba" to yourself, pausing a few times to wipe the mud off your boots with tissues.

Above the eastern river we reached the 144-foot minaret of a mosque begun by the Almohad dynasty’s last great ruler Yacoub al-Mansour in 1195 and abandoned, unfinished, after his death four years later. The other, earthquake-shattered remains of the mosque stood in short pillared rows around it, leftovers of a ruler’s vanity. Just beyond them, the white marble walls and green pyramid tile roof of a mausoleum slanted in surreal gleam against a dull sky. The mausoleum holds the remains of Mohammed V, father of King Hassan, and a symbol of Moroccan nationalism because he stood up to France 
and led the way against its paternal rule.

I stood on a stairway between the structures, scanning the faces of holiday families as they cascaded around me. Two women in full-length robes dragged a girl of about 8, dressed in sweatshirt and jeans, up the steps. The girl studied the steps as they passed under her feet. Each woman held the girl with one hand while she scooped folds of robe with the other. Tucked scarves framed their unsmiling faces squarely. They looked like mothers anywhere the world. Tired.

Inside the mausoleum, I contemplated the intricate ceramic tile work. It’s one thing to read in a history book that the Arabs transmitted mathematical genius across the Middle East, another to see it this way. Patterns interlock geometrically and create another dimension. Done by men, their delicacy seemed feminine, and flowed tranquil as a garden stream.

Outside, I plunked down on a bench to write. You sat nearby and waited obediently. Even in silence, though, you scattered my thoughts. I scavenged the scene for a focus.

There. Framed at the exact midpoint of three beige archways, a royal guardsman stood at ease. Late afternoon sun soaked his blood-red uniform and glinted off its brass buttons. The light carved cleanly his thick white belt, white-gloved fist, draped white cloak. One beam plucked out the white felt emblem centered on his fez. Next to his leg a dark brown rifle hid like a long shadow. His mustache drew a straight line above curvaceous lips.

His dark eyes sought signs of threat and found none. Inhuman, perfect, he held the pose. He was the timeless Morocco of my visions, an object d'art on a velvet shelf. I trusted him, this clean, expected image. My eyes clung to his beauty. It’s too bad I didn’t tell you how I longed to rest my body against his steady maleness. You would have understood.

At my hotel you waited in the lobby while I went to my room, and when I returned you showed me a slip of paper. A man had given you his phone number and asked you to have a drink with him. You thought he was just being nice. I buried my head in my hands. I calculated what it would cost me to keep you safe for the night. I'd buy dinner, and pay 30 dirhams extra to have you stay in my room, and give you a bit of cash so you could buy your train ticket home. Altogether I wouldn't be out more than 10 bucks. I was still worried about whether you would steal my things while I was asleep, so I decided to keep my two locked bags beside the bed, and lock us in the room so that you couldn't dash out with the bags, and I’d sleep wearing my money belt with my cash and the key to the room. A little paranoid, but you were someone I still didn’t know well enough to trust.

And then I remembered Barbara. I had met her in Costa Rica on my first solo overseas trip, just before I turned 30. I was trying to decide whether I should go ahead with the divorce from my husband, and decided a trip to a developing country would be a good test of how much I could withstand alone. As I stood in that immigration line in San Jose, my few words of Spanish seemed so inadequate that I may as well have been a mute. Because I was experimenting with freedom, I had no hotel reservations and no idea where I was going to spend the night. I had never taken a taxi from an international airport and I knew not one single person in Costa Rica.

My eyes fell on the immigration paperwork of the woman in front of me in line. Barbara, round-faced and with the frayed, loose-ended look of a busy mother, was a Berkeley biologist. I struck up a conversation with her. She'd been coming to Costa Rica for 20 years, and was there this time to set up a visit for a congressional delegation to show them the country’s rainforest preservation efforts. At the time I was an environmental reporter, so I peppered her with questions and we talked our way through the line. When I admitted my travel inexperience, she offered to take me along with her.

We shared a taxi to the city, and she dropped me off at a cheap, safe hotel. I spent the next four days with Barbara and her driver in a Jeep, bouncing around nature reserves and sharing the rooms she’d reserved far in advance. She smoothed out my phrase-book Spanish. She taught me to throw toilet paper into the plastic basket instead of the feeble toilets. Everywhere she pointed out things only a biologist sees: flitting green birds camouflaged in trees, indentations in the sand where the lion ant traps its victims. She seemed hesitant about me when I left her. I was no longer hesitant. For the days on my own, Costa Rica was mine. On every trip, I swear I will write Barbara a thank-you note when I get home.

As you and I left for the restaurant, you burst out, "I don't know how to say thank you!"

"Many strangers have been kind to me," I said. "This is how I repay them."

The thought caught in my throat. I rarely ask for help from strangers, and I say it is because I cannot reciprocate. Really it’s because asking for help exposes the fraud of my declared independence. We ordered pizza and French fries. Television blared in the corner above our heads, a local soap opera, and we laughed at the melodrama of a quarreling family that is the same all over the world.

You asked if I liked children. "Yes--other people's children," I said.

Your brown eyes opened wide. "You don't want your own?"

I paused, and was going to give you my stock response -- that I like being free to do as I please, and the world already has too many children, and I wouldn't be a good mother anyhow.

"I'm not sure," I said. "Maybe. But it's probably too late now anyhow."

The potato stuck as I tried to swallow. I breathed deeply and stared at the TV. You looked at me a bit later and said, "Sister--merci beaucoup."

We ordered more French fries. I asked you what you had learned.

"First," you said, "always call first if you are expecting to stay with somebody!" I smiled.

"Second, be careful."

I nodded.

"Third, if you are a nice person, you will meet nice people."

"Yes, I believe that too," I admitted.

You asked me what I thought you should get from this.

"Keep your money in separate places so no one gets it all," I said. You nodded.

"Be careful about who you trust," I said. "You were lucky with me, but I could have been a drug addict, or a thief, or I could have tied you up and locked you in the closet, or thrown you off the balcony." You looked both afraid and ashamed.

"And third --" I searched for soft words, and slowed down. "I think women all over the world tend to be too weak, too dependent. Don't expect other people to take care of you. It's good to have people you trust who can help you, of course, like your family. But try not to let yourself get in a position where other people have to take care of you. Be strong, have a plan."

The TV voices reminded me of how I sounded. "I know this is kind of an American ideology," I said. "But I think it is a good one."

In the morning, you said,

Yesterday, on Mother’s Day, I thought of you and wondered where you were. Though I gave you my address, you’ve never written me. I understand.