There’s one question that I regularly encounter in Morocco with my newly-grown beard. “Are you Muslim?” the vendors ask in Arabic. I’ve come to realize that in Muslim countries, a beard carries a specific meaning, or at least something other than, “I’m too lazy to shave.”
The connotation of a beard in Muslim societies actually led to one of the stranger conversations that I’ve had here. A student asked me if I was Muslim and began to expound on how Muslims are very into the outward signs of their faith, but they need to focus more on the internal aspects of it. It ended with him informing me that Muslims need fewer beards on their faces and more beards on their hearts, a visual that I’ve been unable to shake even weeks later.
For nearly the last two months, I haven’t shaved, and I’ve been doing my best to grow a beard for the first time in my life. A beard is something that I have always viewed as a rite of passage, something that every man must grow once during his lifetime. Talking with my friend Glenn, who is sadly unable to grow anything more than patchy peach fuzz, he remarked that he’s come to see his inability to grow a beard as an assault on his manhood.
Which, given the fact that I was always the least coordinated kid when it came to sports, finally allows me to feel somewhat secure in my masculinity. It has also given me a reason to feel superior to those who can’t grow beards. As one friend struggles to grow a mustache, I revel in the bushiness of the Grizzly Adams-esque facial hair that I’ve acquired. But as proud as I am, there is always someone better at growing facial hair than I am. Another student, Josh, has a five o’clock shadow that would take me a week and a half to grow.
Many of the other Americans who have been growing beards here have primarily come from military academies. For them, the very existence of facial hair is an act of rebellion, an expression of freedom that they are unable to convey at their home institutions. Two of them have beards of a quality to which I can only aspire; I can envision people getting lost in the thickness of it. They’ve told me that the main downside to the beard is the crumbs and, most annoying, the toothpaste that gets stuck in there. But they stressed that the most important part of growing a beard is staying the course through the awkward early phases, when the growth is patchy and uneven.
I remember when I was younger, going through family albums and seeing pictures of my father in college. He told me that between Thanksgiving and Easter he wouldn’t shave once, and in photos he resembles Forest Gump on his cross-country run (either that, or a homeless man).
I’m glad to say that I’ve yet to be mistaken for a homeless person, but I have been told that if I wanted to, I could probably become an apprentice hobo. This would finally combine my love of riding trains with my desire to have my own bindle.
What I have learned, though, is that my beard has strongly polarized my friends. Many of the friends that I’ve made here have embraced the beard. It could very well be that they just feel that they don’t know me well enough to criticize it to my face. But the majority of my friends at home, most vocally the females, are vehemently opposed to seeing me with a beard when I return home. One went so far as to tell me it’s the one thing that I should leave behind when I’m packing to come home.
Another friend told me that unless I was desperate for warmth, she was anti-beard. I’m still undecided about what I’m going to do when I return home, but right now I’m reveling in my beard and just how splendidly warm my face feels.
