You are coming from Japan on a bikle?

On Friday, I think that that may have been the only English spoken to me until I got home from my bike ride, and that was when I was about a block away from the house.

So, I rode to Skhirat, where I had been invited for couscous by Aicha, a lady who sells oranges by the side of the road. What had happened was that on my previous bike ride, I had stopped to purchase oranges. I had a twenty dirham note and no change, and I'd selected a dirham and a half's worth of oranges. The woman (I did not know her name at that point) told me to just take the oranges. So on my way back, after I'd gotten other snacks, I returned to the stand and tried to pay my dirham and a half. She refused the money and gave me more oranges.

And she invited me to come to couscous on Friday, and gave me her phone number. How do I find your house, I asked her. She pointed to a field across the street from the fruit stand, where there were three houses, and said, "the white one."

So, on Friday I dutifully rode over there, arriving at about two o'clock. A woman answered the door and told me that Aicha wasn't home. I put my helmet back on and was about to leave, but she invited me in; Aicha had gone to the eye doctor. I was fed a pea tajine and fresh bread and homemade leben and tea. Aicha returned, and yelled at me (but nicely) for not having called to confirm. She had gone to the eye doctor, and then the hammam, and looked all pink and freshly scrubbed.

The family (they were all there) talked about how they had some photos somewhere to show me, and I took a bunch of photos of them, and they sent me off with a loaf of fresh bread, and some hardboiled eggs (they have chickens! and cows! and sheep!) and a pile of oranges.

And then I rode home, where, as I was turning onto Mohamed V street, someone yelled the above question at me. He pronounced bikle just like you imagine that he did, like "bike" but with an el added.