Moroccan immigrant calls Valley home

In 1997, Minden resident Touria Salama won the lottery, though no one showed up at her house with balloons and an oversized check. No money was wired into her bank account.

It was a different kind of lottery. She was a 32-year-old single woman living in the North African Arab nation of Morocco, and she had just won a U.S. green card in the state department's lottery program.

"I couldn't believe it," Salama said. "To me, America always seemed out of reach. I remembered seeing 'Little House on the Prairie,' and how everything seemed so neat and beautiful. Whatever we saw in the movies, or on television, we wanted to be there, to have those experiences, to be among those people."

Salama, now 43, has a familiar face. Her curly black hair and warm dark eyes can be seen at the Gardnerville Raley's where she works as a courtesy clerk. Last fall, she could be found at Western Nevada College in Carson City, where she taught her first semester of Arabic. She was scheduled to teach a semester of the language at the Douglas campus this spring, but the class was canceled because not enough people signed up.

"I'm still going to give private lessons," she said. "I don't want my students to forget what they've learned."

Salama speaks three languages: Arabic, French and English. She described the French colonization of Morocco and the resultant blend of languages and cultures.

"It's a very exotic country," she said. "The north borders the Mediterranean and Atlantic, and the south is desert. It's very beautiful. But it's a developing Third World country. It's kind of like Mexico, where the poor are very poor, and the rich are very rich, and there is little in the middle."

Salama said she was one of the few in the middle. She grew up in a village in Fez with seven brothers and sisters, but her family later moved to Casablanca, the country's largest city. There she studied law and worked for a shipping company. She was planning to immigrate to Europe or Canada, thinking America too lofty of a goal, when she saw an ad for the U.S. State Department's annual green card lottery, aimed at countries with low immigration rates.

She applied.

"When I won, it was a huge surprise," she said. "It was magic, the opportunity of a lifetime."

But her family members had mixed reactions.

"My father thought it would be too dangerous," she said. "But then he changed his mind. He said, 'Going to America is like having a crown.'"

Salama said the green card earned her a certain amount of celebrity.

"In my village in Fez, it was a very big deal," she said. "I was considered very special and lucky to have a green card and a chance to live in America."

After nine months of paperwork, interviews and physical examinations at the American Consulate in Morocco, Salama left by herself for New York City.

"I was living it, but at the same time, I couldn't believe it," she said.

Her first destination was Harlem, where she stayed with fellow immigrants, but her first impression was not a good one.

"It was filthy and dirty and I couldn't believe that this was America," she said. "I was crying, but I told myself that I couldn't go back home. So I got up at five or six in the morning and took the subway to Manhattan. There I got out and just stared at the buildings. Then I thought, 'OK, this is the right place.'"

Three weeks later, an employment agency helped Salama find a job in Lake Tahoe.

"My sister's name is Tamou, so I thought Tahoe was a woman's name," she said. "I needed a job badly. I needed to be independent. That night, I got onto a bus. I knew America was huge, but I didn't know it would take three days to get there."

Salama can't recall the exact route she took, but said the farther west she went, the more the country looked like the "Little House on the Prairie."

"I started to really like it," she said. "There is something so magical about this country."

When Salama reached California, the coastal landscape and stucco homes reminded her of Morocco. Then she was driven into the Sierra.

"Normally, I get car sick and can't look out the windows, but I had to," she said. "The mountains and the trees were so gorgeous, like they didn't really exist on earth."

Salama ended up working at Harrah's and Harveys casinos in South Lake Tahoe for eight years. She worked as a cashier, a 21 dealer, a cocktail waitress, and helped in accounting.

"In 1997, there were three Moroccans I knew of in Tahoe," she said. "Now there are more like 30. Still a lot of people are coming to this area, to Reno and Las Vegas, for the opportunities."

Salama eventually moved to Carson Valley.

"Coming down Kingsbury, it was just beautiful," she said. "It's small, quiet and peaceful, not crowded like New York, or like Highway 50 in Tahoe, which is getting crazy. There, people are a little cold. Here, people interact, and they're warm."

In 2003, Salama applied for and achieved U.S. citizenship. She said she wanted all the rights and protections afforded Americans while she traveled back to Morocco.

Although her marriage to an American didn't work out, Salama had a son named Celime, now a second-grader at Minden Elementary School.

"He acts like a typical American kid," she said. "He always wants mashed potatoes and gravy."

Celime has been to Morocco twice, but his relatives have yet to travel to Nevada.

"It's a very expensive long trip," Salama said. "I dream to have them here to see this beauty."

Salama wants to teach Celime about his heritage, and teach him other languages besides English.

"For me, it's an honor to speak English and try to improve," she said. "Things are moving so fast internationally, that we have to keep our doors open. The next generation, our kids, are going to travel outside the U.S., and it's not a good idea to know only one language."

Salama views language as a bridge between clashing cultures. She acknowledged the increasing conflict between the Muslim world and America. She herself was born Muslim, but does not practice.

"I consider myself a human being living on this earth who opens her eyes and finds out she's Muslim," she said.

Salama said people on both sides are often misrepresented and misunderstood.

"America and Americans are not what they (Arabs) see on the news," she said. "It's the same with every country. You have to actually interact with the people.

"I know what's been going on around the world, and I know my people: they would give whatever they have to come here."