E2: Lobster Bob and the Boy at the Blue Gate

Lobster Bob and the Boy at the Blue Gate
Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours | Bob'isms

NARRATOR: Somewhere on Earth, a volcano is smoking. A market smells of a hundred spices. A little plane is climbing higher than the clouds. You can see it. You can learn about it. Every place is real... and it is all out there. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you. Passport ready?

NARRATOR: Every Bob'ism was earned somewhere. Today's was earned in Fes, in Morocco, in the oldest part of the city, where the streets are too narrow for cars and there are about nine thousand alleys. People have lived there since the year 789. And here is the fact to carry to school: the oldest university in the world is in Fes. It is called the Al-Qarawiyyin, and it was founded more than a thousand years ago, in the year 859, by a woman named Fatima al-Fihri. A child can hold that at dinner tonight.

NARRATOR: By the end of this story, you will know today's Bob'ism. And you will know why it is true. Here is Lobster Bob.

LOBSTER BOB: Hola Mijo! Lobster Bob here...

LOBSTER BOB: I parked La Mula, LAM-001-VE, outside the Blue Gate at Bab Bou Jeloud. You cannot drive into the old city. La Mula sat where she was. She does not mind waiting. Waiting is one of the things she is best at.

LOBSTER BOB: I walked in with a guidebook, and three books about Fes that I had read on the flight. I felt prepared. I want to be honest about that. I felt very prepared.

LOBSTER BOB: I was lost in twenty minutes.

LOBSTER BOB: Nine thousand alleys do not care how many books you have read. I walked past the same blue tile once. Then twice. When I passed it the third time, a boy of about eleven was standing next to it, watching me. He did not laugh. I would have understood if he had laughed.

LOBSTER BOB: He walked me back to the gate. It took an hour. He took me through about twenty turns I had not even noticed myself missing. At the gate, he was gone before I could offer him anything. I had not earned that kindness. I had just shown up.

LOBSTER BOB: I came back the next day. I left the map at the hotel.

LOBSTER BOB: I sat down at a small tea shop near the Al-Qarawiyyin, the university that is older than every other university on Earth. I watched three women buy bread. It took them nearly an hour, because buying bread in Fes is not a transaction, it is a conversation. I did not speak. I did not try to learn anything. And somewhere in that hour, the city stopped being nine thousand alleys, and started being a rhythm. The books had given me facts. The hour gave me Fes.

LOBSTER BOB: On the way out, I passed the blue tile. I knew the way this time. Nobody needed to rescue me. I noted that a boy of eleven knew this city better than three books and a guidebook, and that he had charged me nothing for the lesson.

LOBSTER BOB: Respect is not given with arrival. It is earned with attention.

NARRATOR: Subscribe at lobster bobs podcast dot com for your weekly round-up and free resources. Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours is everywhere you listen.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you.

LOBSTER BOB: You are the missing passenger, mijo. Passport ready? The world is not going to wait forever.

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