Haloof or human?

The following photo, snapped by she whose travels make me green with envy, and whose cooking posts inspire hunger and jealousy in equal measure, should be evidence enough that hippos are social creatures. Dangerous at times, yes, especially to foolish bipeds, but we are civilised beings that like nothing better than bathing in congregation.

It will be of little surprise, then, that the human was far more amused than I by a recent encounter at the inexpensive and commodious HI hostel in Casablanca, site of the Hassan II Mosque, the world's second-largest. He kept talking about trying to find a certain Signor Ferrari, but in the end had to settle for being driven from the station in a bright red Fiat Uno.

Anyway, despite his pitiful efforts at speaking Arabic (a practice that he justified by claiming that he was hiding behind someone else's colonial past by speaking French), some visitors from Fes were kind enough to invite him to share their dinner. He was reluctant to join them at first--too busy reading Huysmans' A Rebours, I ask you!--and so had to be gently reminded that sharing meals was simply part of being human, whereas eating alone and keeping to oneself was to be a Haloof--a hippopotamus!

Not once did the (h)aloof human speak up in my defence, even though he's far less sociable than I am. My only revenge was that he ended up having a cold shower, but he'll get his come-uppance one of these days.

I point him, and all ungrateful humans, in the direction of horrible haloof Howard, whose final ingnominy was to refuse to concede to the inevitable until every last vote had been counted.