bisahha: Adventures in Morocco

Purring (with) Demons

2010-11-15T11:37:00.007Z

The sign over the door read “Animal Shelter.”

It tipped our fragile determination off the center of its balance. Had we misunderstood the directions? They had been fairly cryptic – which had seemed only fitting to the nature of our quest. Or was this a clever ruse, perhaps – were we about to engage in something so taboo that a simple unmarked door was not enough disguise? … would we then need a special password to penetrate this curtain of appearance?

My nervous thoughts were interrupted by the sound of keys turning in the lock. The heavy iron door opened to reveal a young girl in pink headscarf and pajamas. She smiled sweetly, and gestured for us to come inside.

I hesitated for a moment, confused by the unexpected normalcy of this encounter. Then, in an attempt to reach out and restore some semblance of balance, we whispered the blunt statement that would yank away the shroud – and either confirm or deny the reality of the mystery we had come in search of.

“Uhm… We’re here for the exorcism?”

The girl nodded again, her expression unchanged. “Right this way,” she said with an encouraging smile, and ushered us in. We were led down a sterile, eggshell hallway; windows along its right-hand wall revealed a patio-turned-terrarium-turned-site of feline urban sprawl. Hundreds of cats darted in, out, and between the iron-grid walls of a metropolis constructed of animal cages.

“You don’t mind cats, do you?” The girl asked, inevitably rhetorically. “We run a shelter for stray animals here.” She turned left, and gestured toward a bare-walled sitting room down the corridor. “He will be right with you.”

With another polite smile she left us there, and returned to her cats. For a moment we stood there silently, awkwardly in the doorway, and regarded the room in front of us. Though perhaps less fancy than usual, it was a Moroccan sitting room like any other. Brocaded sdader (1) lined all four walls, a well-worn rug spanned the sea between them, and a mobile coffee table stood at attention in the center, ready to be rolled to any of the four corners. An overeager, high wattage bulb hung from a wire in the ceiling and boldly shed light on every crevice, depriving the space of any intimacy. This room, too, was populated by a citizenry of cats. A group of kittens huddled, close together, in the corners between couch cushions while their older, more adventurous cousins chased each other around the room in games of adventure and daring. Underneath the coffee table, a few others were enjoying a dinner of fish carcasses – all the while keeping a wary eye on potential thieves.

We took the plunge; stepping over slithering tails and writhing mounds of fur we made our way to a corner of sofa, and carefully sat down. Silently we waited, though not quite knowing for what. Across the room, an older cat tirelessly jumped from one cardboard box to another, in a game of its own invention. It became ever wilder in its jumps, their force propelling the boxes all over the room. Claire and I looked at each other and laughed at the thought that had crossed both our minds:

“You think that cat’s possessed?”

With a broad smile and a “bon soir,” the exorcist then made his entrance. A short, thin, big-bearded old man dressed in white of ambiguous meaning: traditional sarwal down below, Nike dry-fit t-shirt on top.

We returned his greeting with an ambivalent smile: nervousness down below, eagerness on top. Once again, we uttered that strange sentence that seemed so unexpectedly out of place here: “we’re here for the exorcism?”

“Yes, yes,” the man responded nonchalantly. “Marhba, marhba.” Welcome.

“Other foreigners have come to my exorcisms, too,” he continued, in fluent French. “They’re very interested. And of course I’ve spent a lot of time in Europe, myself. But they don’t like Moroccans in Europe. Yes, I’ve been to France, Switzerland; I even studied in Sweden. My father was a diplomat; I had a diplomatic passport. I have a son, now, who studies in France. Oh, but despite that diplomatic passport, I had so many issues at airports. I was always searched. Of course back then, I didn’t understand why. …”

So began an hour-long monologue; a mental voyage back in time, around the world, and – as we had hoped – into the mysterious world of spirits and possession. He wove his theories into the fabric of his stories as though the topic was no more surreal than the hundreds of cats crawling around us. I sat perched on the edge of the couch, my mouth perpetually open in an attempted question – but the man tirelessly spoke, seemingly deaf to our occasional comments.

Meanwhile, the normal activities of an animal shelter continued around us. A family of three had come in and was now being tended to by the girl in pink – undoubtedly the exorcist’s daughter. At their request she picked up and displayed a sequence of cats, helped them choose the perfect pet, packed it in an aerated cardboard box, and then sent the family on its way with all requisite materials.

“… Of course, possession is extremely common in Morocco,” the exorcist continued. He had pulled up a stool and seated himself in front of us – back turned to the daughter, who was now covered in crawling cats. “At least 80% of all Moroccan women are possessed.”

He had anticipated the surprise in our eyes. “Yes, really,” he said. “It’s the parents’ fault. They go see a sorcerer, thinking that they’re protecting their daughters against extramarital sexual encounters, but once the time comes to get them married off, they discover it’s not that easy to get rid of a demon.”

The exorcist’s daughter seemed oblivious to the surreal stories her father was telling us. Her attention was claimed entirely by the throng of unruly cats climbing across her shoulders. Gently she attempted now to instill some discipline, picking each one off her body to administer a dosage of medication and releasing it onto the floor – only to have it crawl back up her legs.

I managed to interject a question. “Does possession always occur through a sorcerer?”

“Not always,” the exorcist responded. “There’s also the evil eye. But most of the time it’s a sorcerer (2). They’re all charlatans. They’ll do anything for those poor naïve parents, as long as they pay – but they’re playing dangerous games. By the time the daughter’s old enough to get married and you need him to undo the spell, the sorcerer will be gone, or dead, and there’ll be no way of finding out where he buried it (3). And then they come to me, in the hopes that I can help them out.”

“And do boys get possessed too?”

“Yes, yes, sometimes parents do it for boys as well. But most often it’s girls. Of course, I’m possessed. I have been, since childhood. I found out because someone told me. Some people can see demons, you know, just like they can see human beings. This person saw my demon – he saw him, with horns and everything – and he told me, ‘you have a demon up there on your shoulder.”

The exorcist leaned down, gently purred at and petted the cat that had nestled itself in between his feet, then continued. “I can see them, too – but I usually see them wrapped up in sheets. I can’t see their face.

“I’ve been possessed since I was six, but for a long time the demon didn’t bother me. It wasn’t until I became more religious that he tried to conquer me. Demons can’t stand prayer, or the Qur’an. But I dealt with it, I still prayed.”

The exorcist here segued into a tangent about his religious credentials, and described what it was like to be the only Arab in a Saudi Arabian class on Islamic theology (4). In terms of piety, he explained, he had been somewhat of a late bloomer.

His stories were only marginally disturbed by the entrance of a tall young man. Thin as a rod, he regarded us shyly with sallow, sunken eyes and announced his presence with a soft and polite “salam aleikum.” Behind him followed a woman, his mother: half as long and three times as wide as he, wrapped up in scarves and jellaba. The exorcist briefly acknowledged them both with another “marhba,” and gestured toward a spot on the sofa. He had just been telling us of the many other foreigners he had had at his exorcisms, and now wanted to know what had brought us to Morocco.

“Ah, the Clinic, yes, I know it well!” The exorcist exclaimed, upon learning the topic of my research. “Yes, I used to live right there, I know some of the doctors (5). Of course, psychiatrists are all charlatans. All they want is money. In fact, hardly anyone really has a psychiatric illness. 90% of the people at that hospital aren’t sick at all; they’re possessed. Psychiatrists can’t help them. In fact, psychiatric medication does more harm than good. You know, those anti-depressants can even increase the risk of suicide. Is Dr. Chikri still there at the Clinic? Yes, he’s the biggest quack of all.”

He now eyed the pair that had been quietly sitting on the sofa for upwards of 10 minutes. “This young man, for example. He was hospitalized at the Clinic for a while. But they couldn’t do a thing for him. He’s not sick; he’s just possessed. That’s why they come to see me, now. I’ve been treating him for a while. His mother, too. Last time they were here and I recited the Qur’an, she began to cry; this means that she’s probably possessed, too.”

The exorcist now got up from his stool, and began to rearrange the cushions by a particular corner of the sofa. He was preparing for his treatment, he clarified. He would have us all sit down right there, so that we could look into his eyes as he recited from the Qur’an.

“Now, demons cannot stand the Qur’an,” the exorcist explained as he worked. “So when they hear my recitation they’ll rebel, and this will lead the possessed person to react violently. Don’t be afraid, come and sit here, and look into my eyes while I recite. If you feel anything – anger, or sadness perhaps – you might be possessed. Possession isn’t as common in the West, but you never know. I’m going to assume you are possessed, because I always do, but let me ask you a few questions, first.”

The exorcist proceeded to take a brief history. “Do you ever have any trouble sleeping? Any nightmares?”

We shook our head in denial, and with a bit of relief.

“Do you ever see any strange shadows?”

Again, we denied.

“Are you married?”

Our negative answer this time constituted a potential warning sign. “Hmmm,” the exorcist responded. “How old are you?”

My revelation raised his eyebrows. He looked at me for a second, as though looking for something in my eyes, and then turned away. “Well,” he then decided, “let’s see how you react to the Qur’an.”

He headed to the other side of the room, and finished up his preparations by unscrewing the top off a 2-gallon-size water bottle that had been placed on top of a wooden dresser. Behind them, a grey kitten sat perched atop a neat row of books - Qur’ans alternated with literature on the proper care of cats. “This water burns the demons,” the exorcist explained as he pushed the kitten’s outstretched nose away from the bottle’s mouth. Along with his recitation, these bottles were meant to render the living room a severely hostile climate for any demon present.

The exorcist then collected the cats present in the room, and exited. The young man’s mother turned to us and smiled, gesturing politely toward the makeshift treatment chair. “No, no,” I responded with a polite smile of my own. “We’re just here to observe today. Please, go ahead, tfeddli.”

“You were at the Clinic?” She then asked, eagerly. Her eyes were soft, tired. I nodded, and explained that I work there.

“My son spent a few weeks there,” she then revealed, in echo with the exorcist. She cocked her head to the side, implicitly gesturing toward the young man beside her.

“Were the doctors able to help him?”

She nodded. “It was good,” she explained, her story now diverging from that of the exorcist. “He got better. And the medication helped. He took Nozinan?” (6). The question mark in her expression and tone sought recognition. I nodded again; “Yes, I know that medication. I’m glad it helped your son.” She smiled, then sighed.

“But the hospital is far away, and those pills are expensive. So now we come here. This is good, too.”

The exorcist now walked back in, his wet forearms suggesting that he had just performed the ritual ablutions required in preparation for any reading of the Qur’an. With an outstretched hand he invited us to take our seats. We politely but firmly declined, explaining that today, we would just be observing.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come and sit here?” He urged again, smiling seductively. “Don’t be afraid!”

We declined once more, and he moved on to invite mother and son. He helped them settle in, adjusting cushions and encouraging the mother to lean back, take a load off. He then placed a hand flatly on top of her head, locked eyes with her, and simply began.

His recitation was melodic; a calm trickling stream of words that seemed instantly to soothe his two patients. They drifted back into the cushions, limbs visibly releasing muscle tension, and their eyes gradually fell shut.

I looked around the room as he recited. Its bright light snuffed out any hint of ceremony. In fact, the exorcist had done nothing to mark the occasion of a ritual. Other than the washing of his forearms, nothing signified any departure from the ordinary flow of day-to-day activity. Through the open living room doors, we could hear the exorcist’s daughter tending to her daily responsibilities in the kitchen; cats settling squabbles over in their feline village. An open window sent in the sounds and smells of the busy street below. Cats wandered in and out, settling down on the carpet and joining in on the recitation with a baseline of purrs.

The exorcist occasionally broke up the steady flow of his words with unexpected bursts of volume or tone. But even these vocal surprises failed to trigger the kind of reaction that he was looking for. His patients remained frustratingly calm. After about 10 minutes of unsuccessful recitation, he stopped.

“Do you feel anything?” He asked. Mother and son shook their head in denial, never losing eye contact with the exorcist. “Nothing?” He asked again, to verify. “Any anger, sadness?” Again, a negative response. He turned to us with the same question; we, likewise, could only deny. The shaking of my head gave expression to my silent sense of relief.

And so the exorcist continued, returning to the calm cadence of Qur’anic Arabic. The two patients sank back into the cushions, closed their eyes, and drifted off once again. A group of cats had now begun to stir. A creature or two secured the grappling hooks of their nails securely in the fabric of the sofas, and proceeded to climb up, down, and across the cliffs and rises of its cushions.

With a jolt, the young man suddenly sat up and opened his eyes.

A kitten had made a leap from the couch cushion behind him, and landed with a thud on the young man’s shoulder. He looked down at the creature, bewildered. Then picked it up, and put it down on the sofa beside him. He tried to settle back into his groove, but his concentration was gone; the cats’ invasion of the sofa was irreversible.

The exorcist continued, seemingly oblivious to the feline interference. He coaxed and pleaded with the demons he believed to be present, playing good-cop-bad-cop with a voice that alternated between soothing recitation and violent syllabic bursts.

When, after 30 minutes, he still had not produced the desired response, the exorcist finally gave up. “Nothing?” he asked, once more. His patients once again shook their heads in denial, their expression almost apologetic. They thanked the exorcist with a shake of the hand, and left the apartment as silently as they had come.

The exorcist turned back to us with the same question. “Nothing?”

We, too, shook our heads in synchronized denial. We scootched forward on the sofa, eager now to end this evening and return to a sense of reality.

“I’m sorry that tonight wasn’t more interesting,” the exorcist continued. “Sometimes recitation just doesn’t work. I know why; it’s those sorcerers, they make… what do you call those? That you hang around your neck?”

“talismans?” Claire offered.

“Yes, talismans. They protect the demons against the Qur’an, so my treatment doesn’t work. Anyway, you must come back some evening; hopefully next time it’ll be more exciting. Marhba, Marhba.”

We had, subtly but surely, managed to stand up and inch our way out of the living room. We moved as though we were trying to slip out unnoticed, an abrupt goodbye seeming like too rude a gesture after this man’s generous though bizarre form of hospitality; too rude a rupture to the natural flow of his stories. We walked to the door with the exorcist in tow, soliloquizing; until our hands on the door knob harmonized with another “marhba, please come back,” and the click of the door unlocking put a final period behind this evening’s odd experience.

(1) Moroccan sofas

(2) Between the evil eye and a sorcerer, the exorcist here suggested that possession always occurs through the interference of a willful, flesh-and-blood agent. As far as I know, this theory is a departure from the general popular lore on spirits – which holds that possession could occur any time one crosses a spirit the wrong way.

(3) Implicit in this account is a theory that I’ve heard elsewhere: sorcerers employ physical objects in the casting of their spells. These objects are then buried in a secret location; finding that location is the key to undoing the spell.

(4) The exorcist discussed his religious education, but never actually gave himself a title. But, given his methods and knowledge of the Qur’an, I assume that he would be considered a fqih.

(5) The exorcist used the word “to live;” he specifically did not use the word ‘hospitalization’, but I wonder if that is what he meant.

(6) Nozinan is an anti-psychotic.

Numbness

2010-10-03T13:32:00.003Z

For the staff of the open women’s ward much of July was spent in frustration over a young woman by the name of Maria.

Maria suffered from a sizeable list of vague physical pains and symptoms. She spent her days inexhaustibly in pursuit of any doctor she could find, beseeching him or her to order her some medical tests. Every fifteen minutes, she’d knock on the door of the doctor’s office with another question. At first the denials were friendly, accompanied by a well-intentioned explanation. But as her persistence grew, doctors’ responses became curt, revealing a mounting vexation. At our regular Thursday morning get-togethers, Maria would raise her hand every time another woman had finished her story – and every time, the psychiatrist would pre-emptively cut her off:

“Do you want to contribute to the subject under discussion, or do you want to talk about yourself?”

“I want to talk about myself,” Maria would respond in a feeble voice, visibly shrinking away from what she knew would be the reaction – and the doctor would politely but curtly tell her to wait her turn.

Maria had been hospitalized for the treatment of depression, but after a few weeks of this behavior, her treating psychiatrist had concluded that she must be suffering from some kind of delusion.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” he sighed one day, after having nicely but firmly sent Maria out of his office for the tenth time that morning.

“The medical tests come back negative every time, but she’s never satisfied. She’ll simply find a new symptom to complain about.”

One of Maria’s most persistent symptoms was her sense that she lacked a stomach. There was no place in her abdomen for food to go, she complained; consequently, she felt neither hunger nor thirst. She expressed a haunting sense of numbness that no doctor seemed able to help her with. Every mealtime became a torturous ordeal; every day was spent in the fruitless pursuit of some kind of feeling – some reminder, perhaps, that she was still alive.

Maria was discharged at the end of the month, without any real improvement in her condition; there simply was nothing more the doctors could do for her.

***

One morning, three weeks later, Maria was back on the ward for a consultation with her doctor. It was the third day of Ramadan. She saw me sitting on a bench in the courtyard, and came over. When I asked her how she was, she sighed.

“I’m still not hungry,” she reported, the tears she was holding back clearly audible in the quiver of her voice. All I could think of to respond was that I was sorry to hear she was not feeling any better. Then, wanting to add at least something of a thoughtful nature, I wished her a “Ramadan moubarak.” Once again she sighed.

“Kansawm,” she said – I’m fasting. “wa lakin kayderrni.” It hurts me.

“Why does it hurt?” I asked, wondering as much about why she was fasting as about why fasting would hurt someone who feels no hunger.

“Ana mrida,” she explained, her tone betraying a sense of urgency. I’m sick.

“Do you have to fast, even if you’re sick?”

She shrugged. “My husband says I have to.”

As she said this, she wandered away; she had spotted her doctor and was off to catch him before he had a chance to leave the ward. She left me sitting on that bench, both confused and intrigued about the seeming paradox between the two things she had just shared with me. If she felt no hunger, why would fasting be difficult for her?

By the end of that day I began to realize that Maria herself had already provided the answer in her explanation: she’s sick.

The Qur’an states that a person suffering from illness is not obligated to participate in the yearly month-long fast.* And indeed, not a single patient on this ward refrained from eating or drinking.** The meal cart came and went at its normal non-Ramadan hours, and the women walked around the ward with cigarettes, coffee, and water bottles as though it was any ordinary day of the year.

Before the start of the month, doctors had explained, with a smile, that Ramadan would divide the women on the ward into two categories. There would be patients who’d beg to go home; who would assure their doctor they were well enough to participate in the full experience of Ramadan with their families. On the other hand, there would be patients – the côté hystérique – who would emphasize their illness and their right to exemption from fasting, as yet another way to claim a kind of special treatment.

However, the women I talked to on the ward expressed both sentiments at once. They expressed frustration over the fact that their hospitalization prevented them from sharing in the experience of Ramadan. This holy month carries incredible cultural significance in Morocco; participation is often as much a religious obligation as it is a way of reaffirming (and showing) your membership of the community. These patients missed their families, the traditions, the general spirit of the month.

On the other hand, however, the women also seemed to understand their isolation as a kind of refuge. Not participating in the fast became, in some ways, a way of underlining their special status, and thus their rights to special treatment. For these patients, in other words, the Qur’anic exemption mentioned above translated into the idea that one’s behavior during Ramadan becomes a visible marker of one’s identity as either healthy or sick. Not fasting constitutes a new way of asserting one’s status as being truly ill – and by extension, not being obligated to fast means that one’s sick role is accepted by the environment, and thus declared legitimate.

Conversely, being obligated to fast thus automatically implies that your illness is denied; that your suffering is not legitimate.

A lot of the patients on the ward suffer from this sense of denial. They feel misunderstood; they complain about their family’s inconsideration for their illness. Of course it isn’t always possible to ascertain whether a patient’s family really is as inconsiderate as she claims, but I do have the sense that mental illness can be a difficult thing for the average Moroccan woman to talk about with her loved ones. Some of these patients come from an environment that does not allow women to talk much about personal feelings, nor to complain about hardship. Some of them are stuck in loveless marriages, and some of them bear sole responsibility for the survival of a large number of family members, without any hope of assistance from anyone else.

I think it might be this sense of denial that makes fasting so painful for Maria – and I think it might be this denial that underlies her sense of numbness in the first place. Whether or not the numbness is ‘delusional’, I think it could be possible that this is her way of expressing a fundamental sense of isolation and disconnect from the world. Maria has no role to play in the public sphere: she is a housewife whose responsibility lies in the home. But there, too, she lives her life unnoticed. Her husband and family members are far-off figures from whom she does not seem to receive much at all in the way of affection. During her four weeks at the Clinic, not once did they come to see her.

Maria is not seen, and not heard, by those around her. Perhaps she has internalized this sense of isolation; and now it is she who can no longer feel. Her husband’s insistence that she fast is another manifestation of his denial, and thus a further deprivation of sensation. It is this that is painful to her. What she seeks, with her pleas to the doctors, is simply a sense of reconnection. A sense of understanding, a listening ear – a sign that she is perceived by the world, which might in turn reignite her own capacity for perception.

We all deserve to be seen. Without it, we might all wither in numbness like Maria. Perhaps that medication might help Maria with her delusion. But mostly, I hope she succeeds in finding a listening ear.

* And in some ways, fasting is a logical impossibility: taking medication already means that your body is ingesting something. Even if you were to stay away from food or drink, a pill taken on its own already breaks the fast. Nevertheless, I was told before the start of the month that for some patients, it might be possible to adjust the dosage of their medication in such a way that they would be able to refrain from ingesting anything during the hours of fasting, thus enabling them to participate.

** I was told, however, that a fair number of male patients at the hospital were, in fact, participating.

Difficult Questions

2010-08-01T19:49:00.002+01:00

A few months ago, I saw an Italian movie entitled Vincere. It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a young Mussolini, marries him, and bears his first child. He then disappears from her life, and while he grows increasingly influential in Italy, she continues to pursue him and demand that he acknowledge and care for his son. Mussolini never responds to her demands and eventually she is thrown into a psychiatric hospital, where she is told that she is delusional and paranoid. Her claims are, in other words, forcefully rendered null and void by the silencing blanket of a psychiatric diagnosis.

The film ultimately never tells you whom to believe. The story is told from the woman’s point of view; the love story is thus as real to you as it is to her – and the psychiatric diagnosis as much of a shock. Then again, the movie reminds you that no documented evidence of the purported marriage, nor of the son’s paternity, has ever been found – and that the woman ultimately had nothing but (irrational?) persistence to fall back on.

The way I see it, this movie brings up an uncomfortable but undeniable issue inherent in the practice of psychiatry: to what extent do psychiatric patients retain the right to a voice, and a claim to truth? Does being mentally ill really mean that one is no longer capable of rationality or logical thought, and does that thereby authorize the rest of us to stop listening to such a person’s voice, and to make decisions on their behalf?

This question has come up a lot for me over the course of my fieldwork at the Clinic – I think of Marwa’s outrageous stories, for example, or Nadia’s and Mr. Abbas’ linguistic (and other) claims to some modicum of status. I think also of other patients who lament that no one at the hospital listens to their complaints, or others who have been abandoned by their families, conveniently left behind and out of sight in the safe confines of a psychiatric clinic. I could write endless stories about the impact of psychiatry on the experience of agency and autonomy among the women I’ve met. And I probably will.

But the reason I bring up this issue now, is that it has recently been thrown into particular relief – in the sense that I seem to have gotten myself quite actively involved in a case where the question of ‘agency’ lies at the very heart of the doctors’ difficulty in devising an adequate “prise en charge.”

A few weeks ago, a European woman was hospitalized at the Clinic’s closed ward. She had been wandering around Morocco for a few days when she was picked up by the police for attempting to trespass on Palace grounds, and brought to the psychiatric emergency department. Because this woman speaks no French and the doctors speak very little English, I was asked to help facilitate the communication by doing a bit of translation. One conversation led to the next, and slowly but surely, I slid right into the middle of it all, becoming a bit of a mediator between doctors, patient, her country’s embassy, and her insurance company.*

The hospitalized woman believes herself to be a medium of sorts. Her supernatural powers have granted her visions, most of which revolve around vast conspiracy theories – some of them involving herself as the target. She is convinced, for example, that the entire global network of her country’s embassies have joined forces with the Moroccan police and the Clinic, all in an effort to silence and imprison her. As you might imagine, this does not exactly leave her willing to listen to anything the doctors (or the embassy) have to say.

The Clinic, understandably uncomfortable with this very foreign patient, would have preferred for the embassy to take her off their hands. They had hoped or assumed that a few phone calls would mobilize this European country’s network of diplomatic and financial resources, and that with a day or two some representative would come to repatriate the delusional wanderer.

The embassy, however, had a very different point of view. The patient had aggressively refused their initial attempts at communication, and to them, this effectively annulled any and all obligations they may have had toward this woman. As they explained to me, the ministry of foreign affairs would not be authorized to do a single thing, unless the woman herself indicated a wish to be assisted.

A group of doctors attempted explanation: a psychiatric patient cannot be taken at her word, they told the embassy’s representatives. This woman’s judgment has been impaired, and her rejection of help should thus in no way be taken seriously. At times like these, decisions have to be made by experts who know what’s best for her. But the embassy stood firm, and politely apologized: the patient was now the responsibility of the hospital and the Moroccan police; they were free to decide as they wished.

This is the stalemate in which we now find ourselves. The hospital feels that it cannot, in good conscience, release this woman back to the streets (not in the least because she herself indicates that she intends to go right back to the Palace and try to gain entry. Which means that most likely she’d just be picked up by the police again, who for all we know might take her to jail next time). However, keeping her at the Clinic clearly is no more of an ideal solution. Without the possibility of actual conversation between patient and doctor, effective treatment becomes nearly impossible, and the stalemate continues.

So what is the answer here? Should the woman’s refusal of help have indeed been ignored, under the presumption that she is in no condition to make decisions on her own behalf? Should the embassy have stepped in? Or were they right in respecting the woman’s voice?

I have to admit that I’m undecided. Theoretically, I would and always will argue that no one should ever be deprived of a voice. Everyone, including someone with a psychiatric diagnosis, has the right to be listened to. Everyone has the right to their own personal version of truth, and behind every delusion lies a subjective lived experience in need of some kind of resonance, even if simply with a sympathetic ear. In addition, dangerous power issues lurk in the shadows of cases like these. There is a dark side to the history of psychiatry; there have been instances in the past (distant and not-so-distant) where it has been used as a convenient way to silence individuals with viewpoints that were dangerous for the stability of the status quo (which is, in fact, exactly what this particular European patient is accusing ‘us’ of doing).

Besides – who are we to decide what’s ‘rational’, ‘true’, or ‘valid’, anyway? What makes a psychiatrist the expert? Aren’t all these concepts ultimately relative?

But this time I’m compelled to think and reflect from a vantage point that is no longer merely theoretical, and it’s led me to think more about the other side of the coin – it’s let me perhaps to better recognize the very real and very thorny complexity of the whole issue. I will always maintain that the above theoretical questions are important to keep in mind, but the very practical scenario that we are dealing with at the moment raises an additional, very different set of concerns; concerns that have not so much to do with the existential right to agency as they do with the real-world consequences of allowing a delusional person to make their own decisions.

Yes, a patient should always be listened to, heard, validated. But if the patient’s only request is to be released from what she sees as inhuman imprisonment, and you know that, were she to be sent back out to the streets she would most likely be picked right back up by the police and brought back to the hospital (or worse, jail), what do you do?

And if a patient refuses to take her medication, claiming that she is not sick – but your medical training tells you that pharmaceuticals are the only quick and effective way to help her find her way out of hallucination, are you justified in forcing it on her?

And finally, where do you draw the line? When Marwa told me about military bases on other planets, I was fairly certain that this truth existed only in her mind. But when a woman claims to have given birth to Mussolini’s oldest son, whom do you believe, and on what basis do you make that choice? How far do you go in finding ‘proof’? Who, in the end, has the right to determine whether or not a mind is ‘rational’ enough to retain its claims to agency?

* This is a new role for me at the hospital. I’ve always been the observer, never the participant. I’m not a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, not even a social worker; I wasn’t qualified or able to really do anything useful. Now, suddenly, I’m being involved, asked for input, even needed perhaps – and I have to admit that it feels really, really good. I love the idea of being able to do something.)

Beating the Odds?

2010-07-27T15:51:00.001+01:00

I’m writing a second piece on the same patient, for a change – because Soukaina’s story isn’t finished. In the weeks since I posted my initial description of her, she has truly and amazingly come alive. She has cast off her shadows, and seems to have beaten the depressing psychiatric odds with which I ended that first post.

It began with laughter. A kind of bubbling energy she simply could not keep inside. An entire Thursday morning meeting once played itself out to the underlying soundtrack of Soukaina’s bursts of hilarity. Like a steady rhythm, she accompanied other patients’ words, sighs, and tears with her own uncontrollable snorts, giggles, and whinnies. The same impulse would get the better of her when out and about on the ward; the tiniest odd sound could set her off. She tried to hold it in, she really did – hands shielding her mouth like a prison door, the head pressed tightly into her knees, she did her best to maintain an internal sense of order. But to no avail; she seemed beset by an effervescence too large for her small frame.

Her laughter then paved the way for words. Cautious utterances at first: a tentative “mezyane” (good) or “nglis?” (can I sit?). But with every passing day, her voice grew stronger and her communicative overtures bolder. And last week, this development culminated in an actual conversation. She and I sat side by side on a bench in the sun, my hand in hers, as she asked me question after question. Where was I from? Where were my parents? Did I have brothers and sisters? Where did I live now? Did I live alone? What was my job at the hospital? How old was I?

This conversation likewise had its own laugh track. Everything I said prompted a burst of giggles. Maybe, I remember thinking self-consciously, it’s my horrible pronunciation of Arabic. Maybe it’s my strange blonde hair, or the way I look at her. But maybe it’s simply her own joy at the lifting of that mental cloud – and maybe it’s all of those things at once.

But mostly, I remember, I simply had the urge to giggle along with her. I responded to each of her questions with one of my own, and I reveled – as she sat there with her eyes full of recognition; as she revealed her self to me. I reveled in the possibility of being able to actually listen to her.

There was an urgency to it all. We talked as though we were making up for lost time – or perhaps as though we were afraid this window might close up just as quickly as it had opened. But the next morning, when I found her again in the courtyard, our conversation simply continued.

This time she requested to see photographs of my family. I took her with me to the doctor’s office, opened up my laptop, and showed her a collection of pictures. Again, her reaction was strong and fizzy. It was the details that seemed to strike her most – the color of my sister’s dress, my father’s glasses, a can of coke in the background somewhere. It all met with an explosion of laughter, and constant, repetitive requests for me to explain what was shown in the picture.

After lunch on that same day, it was she who dragged me back to the doctor’s office. I once again opened up the pictures of my family – but that’s not what she wanted, this time.

“Show me pictures of the king of America,” she now demanded.

I smiled, toyed briefly with the idea of interpreting that creatively, then connected to the internet and searched for a few pictures of Barack Obama.

Soukaina showed a decided preference for a set of photos depicting the president along with his family. Old wedding pictures, or professional portraits of the Obamas with their kids. Again Soukaina responded with laughter, and endless requests for me to identify each individual in the frame.

Her favorite photo of all showed Obama’s two young daughters, gleaming on a stage somewhere – a snapshot moment during the campaign trail, no doubt. Soukaina stared at it for a while, as though caught by something; then pointed to Malia’s dress and looked me in the eyes.

“what do you call that color in French?”

“Rose,” I responded. “Like your pajamas.”

Soukaina looked down at her own chest, looked back up at the picture, then turned to me.

“Rose,” she repeated, and once more burst into laughter. She leaned in, hugged me close, then kissed me on the cheek. I couldn’t help but laugh with her. I was mystified by the connection she had just somehow made, the recognition she had found in that picture of two unknown girls –

… but I loved it.

And I hope with all hope that she holds on to this clarity and joy…

An impossible Choice

2010-07-13T21:39:00.002+01:00

Wherever the action is, there you’ll find Soukaina. She spends her days strolling along the ward’s courtyard, observing life as it is lived by her fellow patients. Not yet 15 years old, she is always dressed in the same stained pair of pajamas; her feet drag along a pair of pink plastic slippers, and her hair is haphazardly covered by a disheveled headscarf. She makes her rounds at a steady pace, arms swaying heavily by her side, shyly looking around at her passers-by. She halts in the occasional doorway, quietly watching as other women are having coffee with their visitors. Then she moves on to investigate what’s going on at the end of the hallway there, where her doctor is conversing with an anonymous face. She makes a u-turn, stopping briefly to poke her head inside the nurses’ office, then fixes her attention on what the gardeners are doing to the bed of roses in the courtyard. She finally ends her tour by settling down beside the group of women seated on a bench, basking in the morning sun.

Soukaina always maintains a bit of distance. She does not like to be touched; any well-intentioned attempt to shake her hand, or make an offering of candy, invites a subtle dance of evasive shifts and shakes of the head. Soukaina has a voice, but prefers to parcel out her words in great moderation; any verbal overture is shyly answered with a quick and tiny smile. At every Thursday morning ijtima’, Soukaina’s doctor performs the ritual of trying to coax out a phrase or two. “Kif bqiti?” she’ll ask, her voice sweet as honey – how have you been? Each week, these questions hang suspended in the air, lonely and heavy with awkwardness, until a few other patients decide to speak up on Soukaina’s behalf. “Oh, the other day she was so chatty!” they’ll say. “Soukaina loves to talk with me, we were laughing and crying together all afternoon!”

***

Soukaina has been on the ward for as long as I can remember. She was there when I first arrived in November and has been a stable presence ever since, quietly strolling through the corridor as other patients come and go around her – like a fixed point of light within a changing image. Over the course of these long months she and I have made slow but steady progress in the buildup of a communicative routine. By January she began to return my greetings with a smile; by February she developed the habit of sitting down beside me as I wrote up my notes, occasionally stretching out a cautious but pioneering finger to get a physical impression of my notebook. By March she began to ask me for the time – always a rapid whisper, barely audible, but words nonetheless! – and by April, she took to following me as I made my own rounds across the ward.

It was around this time that Soukaina was briefly discharged. Her absence did not last long, however; she had spent not four weeks at home with her family before she returned to the hospital and once again took up residence in her old room, as though nothing had ever changed.

Yet something had changed.

I had always thought of Soukaina as an empty notebook; as a set of pages without a story. Beyond the smiles, her eyes were blank – an infinite whiteness that led me to see Soukaina as a moving body without emotions, a conscious mind without thoughts.

This new, re-hospitalized Soukaina remained mute, but now the light seemed to have been turned on behind her eyes. The blankness of before had made way for images, for bright colors in broad brush strokes. I saw an abstract painting, now; a palimpsest of stories each racing out to envelop the beholder.

For a few days, the entire ward reveled in what we thought of as a very pleasant change in Soukaina. Her smiles had become broader, her voice more solid, and her eye-contact more eager. Real communication had begun to seem like a possibility.

Then, from one day to the next, the smiles disappeared. I arrived on the ward one Monday morning to find her sobbing in the courtyard. She saw me as I entered, ran over, and grabbed my hands. For the next three hours, she refused to let go. She dragged me along as she walked restlessly through the corridors, drawn mostly toward the exits – as though she was waiting for someone, or something. The stories in her eyes had become jarring, glaring, frightening in their blackness.

Apparently it had been this way all weekend. “Meskina,” the nurses sighed. “The poor thing – she’s suffering from horrible anxieties and hallucinations.” Whatever had turned on the light behind Soukaina’s eyes had also unleashed something sinister – a monster seemed to have emerged from the shadowy recesses of her mind and now haunted her without reprieve.

Whatever it was, it had exhausted Soukaina’s small body; whenever I managed to sit her down for a moment, her head would begin to loll with the heaviness of sleep, her entire body heaving in yawns of primordial force. Yet she refused to lie down in her bed for a nap, no matter how sweetly our coaxing – and how potent the sleeping pill she’d been made to swallow. It seemed that circling around the ward was Soukaina’s only source of comfort at the moment.

As she pulled me along, I tried to ask her what the matter was. “Yak la bas?” What’s wrong? And Soukaina would simply look at me, a heart-wrenching urgency in her eyes. Her mouth would move, but the sounds remained stuck in her throat. Breathing heavily with the weight of anxiety, she simply pulled me closer, grabbing my forearms now, as the tears ran down her cheeks.

***

Soukaina has schizophrenia, but the autism she was born with has pushed the mute button on her suffering. She is haunted by terrifying delusions and hallucinations that she is unable to communicate to the outside world; she is imprisoned in the tower of her own mind, with a monster in her cell.

Soukaina had always been on Clozapine, a relatively old anti-psychotic drug usually prescribed only as a last resort for those who don’t respond to anything else – because while highly effective, Clozapine comes with a high risk of potentially life-threatening side effects. The drug had pulled a heavy blanket of sedation over what little communicative ability Soukaina had had. But at least, her doctor reminisces, it had gotten rid of the hallucinations - and it had left her calm, content, “gérable."

Soukaina’s parents, however, had not been satisfied. They remembered Soukaina as she had been before illness laid claim to her mind – peculiar, yes, but nevertheless talkative, receptive, capable even of going to school. Hoping for a better outcome, her parents had convinced Soukaina’s doctor to re-hospitalize her and try a new approach to treatment.

“But do you see what happens when you mess with something that works?” The doctor sighs. “All we’ve managed to do is de-stabilize the patient.” Hopefully, she adds, the parents will now realize that Clozapine really wasn’t all that bad.

***

What I find saddest of all about Soukaina’s story is that the doctor has a point. While it may be tempting – worthwhile, even – to dream of perfect cures, there are times or cases in which the reality of psychiatric treatment forces one into an impossible choice between two very imperfect options. While listening to the doctor talk, I had the urge to protest. Could “calm and manageable” ever be a desirable outcome for anyone, given the beauty and creativity that the human brain is capable of producing? Is it ever acceptable to accord someone a fate of diminished mental capacity, if the trade-off is a reprieve from psychiatric symptoms?

It isn’t. Yet I realize that this is not what the doctor is arguing for. She does not see “gérable” as the ideal end-result of Soukaina’s treatment. Not in the least. But in her capacity as a psychiatrist, she is nevertheless compelled to play the role of the realist. And the heart-wrenching reality of this situation quite simply is that Soukaina has to choose between freedom from hallucinations, and freedom of communication.

Freedom of Expression

2010-07-05T16:13:00.000+01:00

It is Thursday morning, and the patients and doctors of the open women’s ward are gathering in the lounge for the weekly ijtima‘ – an hour or so of sharing stories, experiences, and impressions of life at the hospital. As the women take their seats on the couches – traditional design, but with a modern twist – the hum of excited whispers hangs in the air. There’s been conflict in the corridors this week, and the patients are expecting the issue to come to a head at today’s meeting.

This morning I sit next to Nadia, a woman in her fifties who has been hospitalized for treatment of depression. She’s been here for a few weeks now, and is clearly doing better. She no longer isolates herself in her room, and she’s become more talkative of late. She’s gotten back into the habit of applying eye make-up in the morning, and the curl has returned to her short, auburn hair.

She is slightly restless this morning as she listens to her fellow patients’ stories. The group’s anticipation has been satisfied; the two women engaged in conflict have indeed brought their issue to the meeting. It’s a dispute over religious freedom: whereas one party claims her right to religious expression (in her case, the vocal recitation of Qur’anic verses in the ward’s corridors), the other argues for her right of protection from religious indoctrination (especially at ten o’clock at night, when she would prefer to be sleeping). With building emotion, the two women explain their viewpoints to the group; the doctors are barely able to maintain a sense of order.

It is a heavy topic for any group of Moroccan women to stomach on a given Thursday morning. Yet it’s not the content, but the form of the argument that prompts Nadia to lean in and whisper a question in my ear.

“Can you follow all this Arabic?”

I smile, make a gesture with my head to imply that I’m getting the gist, and suggest we try to listen. But Nadia isn’t done yet. She leans over again, seeking understanding in my eyes.

“I have a really hard time understanding Arabic,” she confesses. “I’m not used to it at all.”

And indeed; when it’s Nadia’s turn to talk, she makes a point of announcing that she’d rather speak French. She cannot express herself as freely in Arabic, she explains to the doctor – whose nod of the head indulges Nadia in her request. And so Nadia begins, noticeably changing the tone of the meeting as she informs her audience, in that soft lyrical French of hers, that she had a good week. A few women shift in their seats, straightening their spines, and a subtle sense of formality seems to have impregnated the air around us. All disruptions have come to an end; even the bickering party is now silently listening. And then – just like that, in a blink of an eye that completely negates the gravity of her original request, Nadia downshifts back into Arabic, formulating her closing statements in the local dialect.

***

Nadia identifies herself as Moroccan, and as a Muslim; she says she is proud of her cultural heritage and of her family’s illustrious history. Nevertheless, her words and behavior always betray an apparent need to separate, to distance herself, from mainstream Moroccan consciousness. Contradiction and juxtaposition weave themselves continuously in and out of her autobiography; they are the backbone to her stories’ continuity. She was born to a conservative family and raised in Fes, that bastion of tradition – but she was educated at the French mission’s schools, and walked around her neighborhood’s streets in pigtails and short skirts. Her siblings all followed in her father’s footsteps by pursuing degrees in theology – but Nadia chose instead for a career in medicine. Arabic is the language of her country and her family – but Nadia prefers French, the language of international sophistication. And finally, her sisters have all been unhappily married for upwards of 25 years – while Nadia is a divorcée who’s had several long-term boyfriends.

The status of being divorced exerts a major gravitational pull on her narrative of juxtaposition. It is the dominant cause of her sense of difference; all other facets of her identity revolve around the epicenter of its force, twisted and bent in their own path of expression. Nadia tells me several times that divorced women are “très mal vues” in Morocco; on the scale of status, they rank lower yet than donkeys. She feels that other women – her doctor included – are both unable and unwilling to understand her lifestyle of sexual independence. Utterly incapable of imagining how that kind of freedom might taste, these women cower away in fear of transgressing such moral boundaries themselves. As we sit in the ward’s courtyard, Nadia points to a handful of other patients walking around: these individuals refuse to talk to her, she says; they treat her like a leper. “They must have been married as virgins,” she concludes with a sigh.

Men are not much more capable of comprehension, Nadia laments during our next conversation; sadly, she does not derive much fulfillment from the “amis” she’s had. Moroccan men do not understand her needs. However enlightened or “moderne” they may have claimed to be, her boyfriends nevertheless all expected to be wined and dined – “by me, a doctor, for goodness’ sake!” Nadia exclaims in lingering outrage – without providing much in the way of commitment in return.

To Nadia, Moroccan culture is the source of her illness. Her depression was born of suffocation; a case of asphyxiation by the insurmountable baric pressure of cultural mores and taboos. She spent a few years in France, and remembers it as a place of lightness and air, without a care in the world to weigh her down. The thick, winter blanket of sadness did not descend upon her until she returned to her native land, 15 years ago. I thus begin to wonder if her preference for speaking French might simply be driven by the need to breathe. Perhaps that speaking Arabic – a language indelibly linked to and thus bound by Moroccan standards of (expressive) propriety – feels to her like breathing air deprived of oxygen. Might French then be her escape hatch, a seam in the tightly spun fabric of moral codes? A helium balloon that lifts her high beyond the reach of Moroccan gender expectations?

Regardless of her feelings about Arabic, however, Nadia also speaks French, quite simply, because that is how she was trained. After an education at Morocco’s French schools, a medical degree, and a life lived in Morocco’s elite social circles, it is no surprise that Nadia is more easily able to express herself in French than Arabic.

To her, in any case, this linguistic preference in no way precludes her identification as a Moroccan woman. Though Nadia may take issue with what she sees as certain outdated standards of propriety, she eagerly joins in on conversations about local cuisine, asserts herself as an expert on traditional wedding attire, and confidently proclaims that, even if she does agree that Qur’anic recitation should be reserved for the privacy of one’s room, she believes in the Holy Book’s absolute truth. Nadia’s Moroccanness may be a little particular, a pick-and-choose sampling of the full available menu – but it is nevertheless genuine.

To other patients, however, Nadia’s frenchness signals a pollution – a threat, even, to the authenticity of the ward’s Moroccan identity. And like Marwa before her, she elicits the occasional hostile reaction.

In one such case, the hostility came from Halima, a fellow patient who happened to overhear Nadia in conversation with the parents of a newly admitted young woman. Nadia had eagerly asked the French mother of this young patient where she was from, and then began to share her own pleasant memories of time spent in that particular city. Halima had been standing nearby, and now approached to hiss at Nadia, in French:

“Stop bothering these people, they’re here for their daughter; they don’t want to talk to you!”

Nadia looked at her calmly. “I’m just trying to be friendly, Halima,” she explained. “I just want to make them feel welcome.”

The couple in question listened in slightly disconcerted silence as the two women continued their argument over their heads. Halima had retorted that this couple had no need for a welcoming committee; they’d been living in Morocco for years now. Upon which Nadia had responded that it is always nice to exchange memories of other places, and to hear about familiar cities in France.

Halima, at a loss for a witty retort, responded with an angry look and then grumbled, in the local dialect: “well, I’m Moroccan, and I’m Muslim. I’m proud of it, and I’m going to speak Arabic.”

“But that would be impolite,” Nadia responded in French, calm as ever.

“Not at all,” Halima corrected, still in the local tongue. “These people live in Morocco; they understand Arabic perfectly.” And with that, she walked away.

Nadia turned to the couple, and offered them an apologetic smile. Then she looked at me.

“Do you see these Moroccan women?” she asked. “They’re so short sighted, they don’t understand any lifestyle that doesn’t resemble their own.”

Back in the Day...

2010-06-29T20:49:00.002+01:00

Over the past few months I’ve been working on an essay to submit as part of a proposal for an edited book about the experience of doing research in Morocco. I’m using some ethnographic anecdotes from my work at the Clinic to illustrate how the complexity of Moroccan society’s multilingualism plays out in daily life, and what it all means for someone trying to do research in such a setting.

What follows below is an excerpt from my first draft. After taking a second look at the essay I’ve realized that this section doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the piece. The excerpt describes an episode from one of my very first months in Morocco, and more than a year and a half later, my experiences and circumstances have changed so vastly that this particular little story no longer seems quite relevant to the message I am trying to convey. Yet I cannot bear to simply throw it away. Because relevant or not, this anecdote has become a pleasant memory – and it is a reminder, in many ways, of how far I’ve come (and how much I’ve learned) over the past 20 months.

And so here it is, in blogpost-form

In the fall of 2008, I arrived in Rabat, Morocco, for a period of preliminary fieldwork for my dissertation research. Through a language school in the city’s old medina I arranged for three months of private instruction in Colloquial Moroccan Arabic (or Darija), and a ‘homestay’ with a Rabati family. I came to live in a large house not five winding medina streets away from my school, and became part of a household that consisted almost exclusively of women. At its center stood lalla Khadija,[1] a stout woman in her sixties who came from a time and place where birth dates were not yet recorded, and girls were not yet sent to school. Two of Khadija’s children still lived at home: two daughters, who were temperamental opposites of one another in many ways but shared the common fate of being an unmarried Moroccan woman in her late thirties. The household also included one of Khadija’s grandchildren; her oldest son’s oldest daughter. Together, these four women took care of the cooking and cleaning, and cared for Khadija’s husband, a man about 20 years her senior and no longer capable of much movement.

The lack of privacy in the house facilitated my quick integration into the life of this family. I slept in the living room with the two daughters, assisted with the cooking and baking, helped Asmae, Khadija’s eighteen-year-old granddaughter, with her English homework and wardrobe choices, and spent evenings in the common room, reviewing Arabic vocabulary as the women of my family tuned in to their favorite Turkish soap operas. The family had never showed much interest in my language-learning efforts – until, one evening, my homework material caught the attention of Manal, the oldest of Khadija’s two single daughters. It led to a curious conversation that significantly changed the family’s impression of me and of my purpose in coming to Morocco.

It was about 7 PM, and I was in the living room reviewing flash cards – my preferred method for drilling vocabulary. Manal had just returned home from her small caftan workshop around the corner, and entered the room to change from outdoor clothes back into her pajamas. She said a quick hello, asked me how my day was, and then announced she was going to make us some coffee – but just as she was about to head for the kitchen, her eye was caught by the deck of cards I kept flipping through. Suddenly curious, she turned back to me and asked what I was doing.

“This is how I learn new words,” I explained. “I write the Arabic word on one side, and on the other is the English translation.” I flipped the card over to illustrate.

“Can I see?” she queried, and approached. I handed her a few cards and she studied them intently, a knot slowly twisting across her eyebrows. I remember worrying, self-consciously, that she might not be able to decipher my juvenile Arabic handwriting. Then she shook her head and turned to me.

“This word here is spelled wrong,” she stated in a schoolteacher voice. She sat down beside me on the sdari[2] and reached for the pen that lay on the table in front of us.

“See? There should be a long alif here in between the lam and the qaf,”[3] she corrected. “Like this.” She took the pen and added the alif’s long vertical stroke to the word on the card. I was confused, having just been taught how to spell the word in question that very afternoon. But Manal moved on to card number two. Again, she detected a spelling mistake, and added another missing alif. I looked on, slightly bewildered.

This continued with a few more cards. With each added alif, Manal sighed more deeply, and my bewilderment grew larger. Finally she turned to me. Incredulously, she demanded, “This is what they’re teaching you??”

Then suddenly it dawned on me: she must have assumed I was learning Fusha, or Modern Standard Arabic, rather than the Moroccan dialect. “Oh, wait!” I cried out eagerly, relieved to have identified the source of confusion. “These words are not Fusha, they’re Darija,” I explained, hoping that this clarified the situation.

But she simply looked at me, silently. The knot in her eyebrows showed no signs of disappearing. Then finally she exclaimed, with a mix of surprise and disgust, “You’re learning Darija? Why? Darija is bad, it’s no good!”

A little taken aback, I asked her why. Why on earth would she react this way to the news that I was learning her native language? I had expected at least a little bit of enthusiasm.

“Because it just is. Fusha is just better, it’s the ‘true’ language,” she explained, accompanying her words with heavy arm gestures to convey to me some of the solidity and weight that Fusha seemed to carry in her mind’s eye.

“Darija isn’t spoken right,” she then elaborated, and added an example. “It shouldn’t be tlata; it should be thalatha.” And as the hard ‘t’s of her colloquial dialect made room for the lyrical ‘th’s of Standard Arabic, the scowl on her face smoothed over into an expression of deep satisfaction.

In fact, the differences between Fusha and the Moroccan dialect are many. Fusha, or Modern Standard Arabic, is the contemporary version of Qur’anic Arabic. It is the lingua franca of the Arab world, but native language to none. As is true for all Arabophone countries, the language of daily communication in Morocco is a dialect – a form of Arabic weathered by the test of time, foreign influence, and the transformative process of linguistic evolution. Moroccans refer to their particular dialect as ‘Darija’, and its most noticeable departure from Fusha (aside from the addition of French and Berber loan words) is arguably its pronunciation. To the untrained (and even to the beginning student’s) ear, it often sounds as though speakers of Moroccan dialect have eliminated all vowels from their words – which would explain Manal’s diagnosis of a deplorable lack of alifs in my spelling.

Moroccans agree that no dialect is as far removed from the standard Fusha as their own – and that, in consequence, it is all but incomprehensible to other speakers of Arabic. Nevertheless, most Moroccans deny their dialect the status of ‘real’ language – a sentiment reflected by the late king Hassan II’s choice to designate Fusha, rather than Darija, the country’s official language.[4] As Manal’s comments illustrate, Moroccans consider their dialect to be somewhat of a bastard child. It is the language of mundane, daily activity. Of bargaining at the market, of chatting about the weather, of light banter with friends. Fusha, on the other hand, is reserved for discussion of loftier issues such as religion, literature, or politics – communicative settings perhaps rare enough to have withstood the effects of linguistic evolution. Darija has no literary tradition of its own, and has no official rules of grammar and orthography. Despite my attempts at spelling Moroccan vocabulary, Darija is, in fact, very much an oral language. And by extension of all this, learning Fusha is considered a highly respected endeavor (because it is the gateway for knowledge of the Qur’an, of literature, and of Islamic jurisprudence), while most Moroccans do not consider their dialect worthy of real study.

In consequence I was unable to explain to Manal my reasons for choosing to learn the dialect – at least not in a way that satisfied her strong feelings on the matter. She was not swayed by my purported wish to be able to “talk to Moroccan people.” Why not talk to them in Fusha, she offered in rebuttal. Moroccans would be able to understand, and as an added bonus I’d be able to talk to people outside of Morocco, as well.

Despite her disagreement with my choice, Manal did finally seem to accept the fact that I was learning Darija, and shared the news with the rest of the family later that evening, at dinner. Although the rest of the women were less outspoken about the issue than Manal had been, I still received no positive reinforcement – until Assia, Manal’s younger sister, declared, “well, this means that we can speak Arabic with you now.”

Though I had occasionally tried out my newly learned Moroccan vocabulary on the family, they had, until that moment, always spoken French to me. But Assia’s pronouncement occasioned an immediate departure from that: for the rest of the evening they resolutely addressed me in Darija, and tested my vocabulary by pointing to random items on the table and asking me for a definition. Every answer, right or wrong, led to great laughter and comments of encouragement.

That night, as I wrote in my field notes, I tried to make sense of this strange interaction. What did Assia mean, that now they could speak Arabic with me? Was Fusha not Arabic too? In fact, didn’t Manal’s reaction suggest that Fusha was much more ‘real’, as far as Arabic goes, than Darija? Why did they want to speak Darija, but not Fusha, with me?

As I came to discover in the months that followed, the answers to these questions have to do with the particular role that language plays in Moroccan culture, politics, and constructs of identity. I am not a linguistic anthropologist, and the purported topic of my future dissertation is quite unrelated to the issue of language. However, living in Morocco over the past eighteen months has taught me that language, in this society, is intimately connected to definitions of what constitutes authentic ‘culture’, to notions of status, and to decisions about who belongs, and who does not.

My host family’s reaction to the discovery that I was learning Darija reveals a love/hate relationship with their dialect. It is not considered ‘real’ or worthy of study, but nevertheless it is theirs, it is the language in which they are most comfortable, and it is intimately connected to their culture and traditions. Though Fusha is often placed on a pedestal as a kind of ‘pure’ and ‘ideal’ Arabic, it is a language that the average Moroccan only masters passively. It is taught in school, and it is heard on radio and television; most Moroccans will thus understand anything said to them in Standard Arabic. Speaking it, however, would be the equivalent of an American speaking Shakespearean English. Fusha, one might venture to argue (from a linguistic standpoint at least), is no more ‘their’ language than French would be.

Moroccan Arabic, in contrast, is entirely ‘theirs’. It may not be a real language, but speaking it signals a kind of cultural belonging, or insiderness in a way that Fusha cannot. I had noted this difference in value before, when I first came to Morocco in the spring of 2005. I was in Fès for a period of three months, and took an intensive course of beginning Darija, followed immediately by an intensive course of intermediate Fusha. Whereas topics of discussion in the colloquial class included Moroccan customs, traditions, and superstitions, the Fusha classes focused on pan-Arab politics, Middle-Eastern history, and Qur’anic theology. Feeling a growing disconnect from the Moroccan context during that last course, I remember regretting my decision to switch from dialect to standard Arabic.

In late 2008, the shift in language of communication likewise brought with it a shift in subject matter. Communication with my host family became at once much more extensive, and much more context-related. Whereas before they had answered my curious questions about Moroccan customs only superficially, the women now began to explain things to me with enthusiasm, and to include me in their activities – claiming that it would be a ‘learning experience’ for me. Before the shift, they had warned me that I wouldn’t be able to handle witnessing the sacrifice of a sheep during the upcoming ‘Eid leKbir. But now, now that we were speaking Darija, I was not only allowed to be present, but was in fact charged with documenting the whole day with my digital camera. It was, in short, as though a door had been opened, and I was finally allowed inside the private life of this family. The realization that I was learning Darija seemed to have utterly changed the family’s impression of me. Before, I had simply been another foreign student, here to learn a language and then go back home. Their preference for speaking French with me at that time suggests an a priori assumption of an insurmountable communicative and cultural divide; a fundamental difference, an inherent outsiderness on my part. The fact that I was studying Darija, however, seemed to have led them to discern in me a potential for immersion, learning, understanding, and perhaps even integration. Perhaps my interest in Darija confirmed for them the sincerity of my interest in Moroccan culture – and their ability to speak to me in dialect allowed them to talk to me about it in its own terms. Darija may be no Fusha, but it is the vehicle of Moroccan culture.[5]

[1] Lalla is the Moroccan word for “lady,” or “mrs.” It is commonly followed by a first name. All first and last names used in this paper are pseudonyms chosen by the author.

[2] A sdari (pl. sdader) is a Moroccan sofa: a thick and firm mattress-like seat that rests on a wooden base, and a back rest of loose cushions. Sdader typically line all four walls of a Moroccan sitting room.

[3] An alif is an ‘A’, a lam an ‘L’, and a qaf is a ‘K’ pronounced deep in the throat.

[4] History books argue that this choice was driven by a desire to align Morocco with pan-Arab political movements that were emerging at the time in the Middle East.

[5] This was again confirmed a few weeks later, at a friend’s wedding. I had commented to Manal on something, and had switched back into French because I was unsure of the right Arabic word. She turned to me and told me in no uncertain terms that we had to speak ‘Arabic’ right now, because we were at a wedding, and that was a ‘Moroccan’ event. French would thus be inappropriate.

In Need of a Listening Ear

2010-06-18T13:10:00.005+01:00

“Charlotte,” she calls out. “Charlotte, shoufi,” look at me.

I turn towards her and she stands there in the middle of the room, a seductive smile on her face as she dances to the sound of Egyptian pop. She’s feeling the rhythm with eyes half closed.

“Like this, see?” she says and puts her hands on her hips for emphasis, swaying back and forth to the beat. She motions for me to join her. “Come here, try it. Leave your jacket.”

I get up off the couch, and join her in movement. She regards me critically as I attempt to imitate her movements, then laughs. “Hey, come and see!” She calls out to people walking by outside. “Charlotte’s belly dancing!”

***

I first talk to Rachida one Wednesday morning, two days after her hospitalization. On the day of her admission she’d been wearing a black Saudi-style abaya* with matching headscarf; twenty-four hours later, the Islamic clothing has been replaced by a leopard-print track suit. Diamond studs across the chest spell out “Chanel.” She has joined the other patients’ regular grooming activities, and now walks around with her hair blown out into large curls, her lips painted a deep pink, and her eyes accented with heavy lines of kohl.

Within ten minutes of meeting her, Rachida has filled me in on the pertinent parts of her biography. She lives in a southern Moroccan town with her husband and three children, and she is a housewife. With regard to that last fact, there are three things I need to know. First of all, that she is highly intelligent – she could have pursued a higher education, had she been given the opportunity. Secondly, that she is a great cook (which prompts her to describe, in elaborate detail, the particular dishes she’s mastered). And thirdly, that she hasn’t lifted a finger in the house ever since she fell ill, now three years ago. “Je fais rien – du – tout,” she summarizes for emphasis.

She doesn’t know how or why she got sick. It simply happened one day, mysteriously and suddenly. For three long years she was incapacitated – but she’s definitely feeling better now, she lets me know. She tells me she’s “farhana,” happy, on the ward: everyone is nice, there’s always someone to talk to, and everything is taken care of (though the food doesn’t compare to what she whips up at home, of course).

She’s invited me to her room, and we sit on her bed as she shows me pictures of her family, describing each of her loved ones in the most positive of terms. I casually remark that her husband bears a striking resemblance to her late father: both were military men who seem to fulfill all the requirements of ideal Moroccan masculinity. She’s spoken of both with tenderness in her voice. But here I seem to have overstepped some boundary. “Not at all!” she exclaims with a vehemence that makes me fear I might have sullied someone’s image. Her father was a great man, she assures me; a truly great man. Her husband, on the other hand, is revealed to be a jealous grouch. Like all men from the south, he is conservative and traditional; it’s because of him that she stays at home, wears a headscarf, and keeps her distance from unknown men.

And suddenly she suggests that this stifling home environment is the actual cause of her malaise. She isn’t happy in her southern town, she explains; she feels quite literally like a fish on dry, desert-like land. She would much prefer to live in a place like Rabat, where women have jobs, and go to the beach whenever they like. She’s glad to be far away from her husband for the time being. He’s not allowed to visit her (doctor’s orders), but she doesn’t mind one bit. This way, she says with a smile, she can truly relax and get better.

Rachida’s eagerness to talk compels me to recruit her as a research participant. And she is indeed happy to be interviewed – yet the conversations that ensue are not nearly as rich or productive as I had hoped. The thing is that Rachida’s stories are a bit like a pre-recorded message; no matter what questions I ask, she tells me this same basic narrative over and over again. Behind this story is a mental wall that I simply cannot manage to break through. She repeatedly tells me that she is entrusting me and my recorder with her deepest secrets, but I get none of the subjective detail or emotional depth that I had expected to find.

It takes me a while (and quite a bit of self-doubt about my qualities as an interviewer) to realize that this is the very source of Rachida’s problem. It seems that she may have been right on the money when she blamed her environment for her illness. Rachida has lived her life in a time and place that discouraged women’s freedom to express their personal feelings and desires. She is hermetic about what goes on in her mind not because she does not want to share, but because she quite simply never learned how to do so.

Nevertheless, everyone needs an outlet – everyone needs to vent. And so in the absence of words, Rachida communicates with her body. Her malaise manifests itself to her as fatigue, depression, or a momentary lapse in consciousness that she explains as a neurological anomaly. She is a hypochondriac, and her medical file contains three inches worth of lab reports, x-rays, and MRI scans that all come to the same conclusion: her problem is mental, not physical.

Her inability to communicate verbally also explains her need for attention and tendency to seduce. Stuck in an impossible position, between a lack of words and the uncontrollable need to finally be heard, Rachida craves human interaction and a bit of understanding. But unable to ask for it directly, she’s learned to attract it by using the physical power of her femininity.

Rachida is, in a word, hystérique. The days of Freud are long gone, and the term “hysteria” no longer appears in the international diagnostic manuals currently in use – but it is alive and well in Morocco. The women’s ward always houses a few patients with hysteria; women just like Rachida, who have no other way to speak than through their bodies.

The doctors are stern with Rachida. She is taking anti-depressants, but the dominant aspect of her treatment involves a kind of behavioral therapy. Rachida must learn to be more emotionally independent, and she must learn to talk about her feelings. The doctor meets with her every day, and patiently yet persistently attempts to break through her mental wall. But women like Rachida are never allowed to stay at the hospital too long. This so as not to indulge in the ‘secondary benefits’ of hospitalization. Being a patient means being confirmed as being ‘sick’ – and that label entitles one to all kinds of special care and attention. Most patients cannot wait to be cured and discharged. But les hystériques? They couldn’t be happier, right here on the ward, being taken care of by everyone else. In order to ensure that such women still retain some motivation to get better, the staff tries to make hospitalization slightly less attractive – by cutting off certain privileges. This is why Rachida isn’t allowed to have visitors. She’s also not allowed to keep her cell phone with her, and although the staff encourages her to talk, they make sure not to be too available to her.

Luckily I am not a member of the staff, and I can be as available to Rachida as I want. Perhaps I can be a listening ear that doesn’t probe for uncomfortable details, I decide. And so I give up on diving into the depths of her mind, settling instead for easy interaction. Aside from our interviews I hang out with her on the ward’s courtyard, relaxing in the sun. As we sit side by side, she’ll turn to me, put on her nicest smile, and ask, “Comment tu me trouves?” What do you think of me?

I’ll turn, and look at her. And before I get a chance to answer, she’ll hint at the particular kind of compliment she’s looking for that day.

On this particular afternoon, she runs her fingers through her hair and poses a rhetorical question.

“I have nice hair, right?”

I express my agreement, and she continues. It’s perfectly curly, she explains. And no matter what she does with it, it always looks great. It’s just too bad she’ll have to cover it back up with a headscarf as soon as she leaves the hospital…

And off she goes; she has launched herself into another rendition of her biography. I lean back in the sun, put a smile on my face, and simply listen.

* basically, a long, formless black dress

Chatterbox

2010-06-12T17:42:00.001+01:00

Hafida is 57, though you wouldn't say so if you saw her. The years seem to have weighed more heavily on Hafida's shoulders than on those of others. The passage of time has etched deep wrinkles across her forehead, and her deep-set eyes betray the depth of her exhaustion. She shuffles around the ward in pink hospital-issued pajama's, three sizes too big for her skin-and-bones frame; with her back hunched forward she’s forever looking down at her feet. She always carries around a big woolen sweater, as though she is planning ahead for an upcoming departure. But other than a dubious brother and a modest pension fund, the doctors tell me there is little waiting for her at home.

"On fait avec," she answers with a sigh and a smile, every time I ask her how she's doing. "On fait avec," 'we do the best we can.' According to Hafida, her best days are behind her. She is old and tired; her life has been reduced to the nostalgic memory of opportunities and experiences that have long since retreated beyond her grasp. She believes she has exhausted her potential, and her candle’s flame has been all but blown out.

The doctors tell me that her “tristesse” is part of her illness. She has schizo-affective disorder, an illness in which the normal manifestation of schizophrenia is compounded by an extreme fluctuation of one’s mood. Yet I cannot help but wonder, who wouldn’t be exhausted after 30 years of hearing voices in your head?

But Hafida is still full of wisdom and stories. As we sit on a bench in the sun, just the two of us, she talks about the important things in life: about love, adventure, and good health. These are the kinds of values, she impresses upon me, of which you don’t realize the importance until it is too late. She advises me to love fully, and to express my feelings. Too many people have locked their hearts, she says. Little do they know that true blindness is not the inability to see, but the inability to feel.

In the same way, our ability to hear means nothing if we cannot listen. When she learns that I am Dutch, she tells me in a mixture of English and rusty German that she made her career as a professor of foreign languages. She speaks at least four different ones – but the most important language of all, she tells me, is “la communication des sourds” - the communication of the deaf. True communication, she explains, requires much more than words. One must be open to, interested in, and understanding of one’s interlocutors. One must always remain curious. In fact, this is the meaning of life: discovery, adventure, and learning. When she was younger, she says, she was like me: as I am exploring Morocco, so she explored Europe. But what you can do, she sighs, when life’s obligations curb your freedom to fly? She impresses upon me the importance of continuing my pursuit of discovery – of never allowing my heart to lock itself into blindness.

***

A few days before her discharge from the hospital, we meet once again on that bench in the sun. We are chatting in our usual mixture of Arabic, French, German, and English, when she unexpectedly turns to me and apologizes for talking so much (little does she know how much I’ve enjoyed listening to her). She wants to know, how do you say “bavard” in English?

“Chatterbox,” I translate.

She nods, and smiles. She likes this word. She is a multilingual chatterbox, she says, who has begun to lose her words. With age, her knowledge is slipping and she no longer speaks any of her languages perfectly.

“Before long,” she concludes with a smile, “I’ll just be an empty box.”

I want to tell her that she need not worry, that she still has plenty of words and stories to fill a lifetime to come – that her candle is not even close to burning out. But I keep this to myself. Nostalgia aside, I’m beginning to realize that Hafida yearns for mental quiet. She has lived a lifetime with an endless stream of verbal commentary running through her mind; I cannot help but think that the prospect of an empty box might finally bring her the relief she’s been seeking.

A Conspiracy Theorist

2010-06-10T17:40:00.001+01:00

Whether it is day or night, Marwa always wears her sunglasses. For a while she wore earplugs, too (is she shutting out the world?), but these disappear after a few months in the hospital. She comes out of her room around 10 o’clock each morning, her head held high and her sharp nose protruding forward in a gesture of pre-emptive haughtiness. A lit cigarette in one hand and a bag or stack of books in the other, she lingers around the ward’s courtyard telling whoever wants to listen about the latest conspiracies she’s uncovered. On a good day, she talks about ongoing disputes between the stray cats that live on the ward; on a bad day she insists that the hospital is about to suffer an attack by weapons of mass destruction – or that George Bush and Osama bin Laden are secretly meeting to plan their takeover of the world.

Marwa does not adhere to the communicative rules of the ward. She cannot keep quiet during the weekly meetings, at which patients are expected to sit quietly and listen to one another as they report on how they passed their week. Despite her best efforts Marwa continually interrupts with questions, demands, and propositions. And rather than talk about her mental condition, she prefers to pose philosophical questions to the group: if one does not cry, does that mean one does not suffer? What is the meaning of silence? And should psychiatrists, in the interest of remaining morally neutral vis-à-vis their patients, be atheists?

She also refuses to speak the appropriate language. She insists on speaking French or English as she tells me about the years she spent in the US, the life she had in Paris, friends who work for big multinationals, and about how she was the first person to ever eat cereal with chocolate milk. At multiple occasions, other patients around her grumble with frustration. She’s just as Moroccan as they are, they remind Marwa; get off your high horse and speak Arabic like the rest of us! Upon which Marwa looks down her nose, tells them that “vous comprenez très bien le français,” and continues her story.

And finally, Marwa says the unsayable; she breaks all taboos. She laughs about her own promiscuity, and argues that the Prophet Mohammed was a pedophilic rapist. Her sacrilegious talk has led to numerous heated arguments with other patients, and to at least one patient’s attempt at exorcising the evil spirits that must be haunting her (while Marwa, cool as a cucumber, simply remarks that it is not she, but the exorcising patient who is really ‘possessed’).

I am not allowed to interview Marwa, lest my tape recorder become the object of another conspiracy theory. But my initial unease with her stories (how to react when someone tells you about military bases on other planets?) quickly transforms into endless fascination, and she is happy to have found a gullible listener. What I love most about Marwa is that to her, life is a reflection of literature. Her books – a collection of aged French paperbacks – are her treasure. She keeps them hidden underneath the blankets on her bed, and always carries a few with her when she’s walking around. In these books, she finds solid proof for her theories. She passes effortlessly through time and space, reality and fantasy, to expose hidden connections between certain people or events. The true mission of the helicopter from Black Hawn Down, she tells me, was the search for a pirate ship with gold. And Hitler is in reality the reincarnation of a 17th century French author. Here, she says, pointing to a drawing in one of her books. Do you see the resemblance in this portrait?

And the thing is, I kind of do. I cannot help but smile.

In turn, literature also becomes a reflection of life. Amongst her books Marwa has notebooks in which she is writing various novels. Fantastical stories they are, involving reincarnations, bodily possession, and time travel. They’re all true stories, too, she says. It’s all happened to her at one point or other, she explains as she puts a smile on her face, stares into space, and reminisces about boyfriends in Paris or international heists she pulled with the CEOs of various companies.

For the other patients, Marwa is a prime example of what it means to be “folle,” crazy. But as preposterous as most of her stories are I am increasingly inclined to wonder if she is mentally ill, or simply eerily perceptive. Her characterizations of other people (doctors, patients) are often dead-on. She imitates them perfectly, getting their gait, their catch-phrases, even the look in their eyes just right. And once in a while, her theories of hostility and conspiracy expose painful anomalies in the hospital’s daily rhythm of life – anomalies perhaps much less ill-intentioned or serious than Marwa perceives, but true nonetheless.

And so I wonder, might there be some grain of truth to her other stories as well? If we take the literalness of her stories with a grain of salt – if we look at them with unfocused eyes, as it were – and interpret them a little more abstractly, might she not be on to something?

Besides, who are we to decide what’s true, anyway? It might be worthwhile just to sit back, smile, and let Marwa take you on a ride of fantasy and excitement...

Nostalgia for the Beyond

2010-05-19T21:28:00.000+01:00

After 18 months in Morocco, I’ve finally set foot in a region I’ve always been curious about: the Rif mountains along Morocco’s Mediterranean coast.

I’ve left behind the now fairly routine rhythm of fieldwork in pursuit of a few days of relaxation. Unable to settle on another good yet economically modest holiday destination (and limited by the Icelandic cloud of ash that obstinately continues to paralyze airway traffic), I managed to convince Farid, my good friend and colleague, to take me north, to his native land.

And so here we are, ensconced in the heart of the legendary Rif. We’re taking day trips west to Al Hoceima, and longer ones east, to Temsamane, Anoual, Nador and Oujda. Other than that we spend most of our days in Beni Bouayach, a small village east of Al Hoceima. It was built only recently, but now serves as a business epicenter of sorts for a number of smaller villages in the surrounding hills. Their dirt roads now meet up on the new main street of this town: a busy, café-lined thoroughfare for tractors and trucks, donkey carts and regional taxis (here painted in a greenish turquoise, in reflection perhaps of the nearby Mediterranean).

The area is full of history, and family trees – centuries old, yet still blooming – are rooted deeply and firmly in its soil. It awakens in my own quite rootless existence a nostalgia for a feeling I’ve never quite had. Each hillside hides a story; each valley is the stage for a family saga. Most of these stories are colored by a theme of opposition against outside forces. The Rif Berbers have long been proud resisters of submission to centralized control, and make subtle claims to separate-ness on a daily basis. It is, first and foremost, a separateness borne by language. The people in this region understand Moroccan Arabic, but their language is Tariffit, and as a matter of principle, they prefer not to speak what they consider the language of the occupier. So as not to grate against local ears, I resort to Arabic only for the most essential communication, but otherwise rely on Farid’s expertise as interpreter.

My own communicative efforts have thereby been reduced to a minimum; as such, the mental complexity of my daily life has been dialed back to a primordial level of simplicity. With my fieldwork in Rabat being so heavily dependent on human interaction, this brief period of virtual deaf/muteness has actually been a welcome respite from my regular life, and amplifies my sense of really being ‘away’. Without that mental exertion directed outward, I’ve been able to focus on turning inward. I’ve had time to think, to process, to formulate new directions for my research. And for the first time in what feels like months, I’m finding time to write again – something other than field notes, that is.

I’ve never spent this much time in a Moroccan village this small, and I adore the snapshots that I am being given of daily life in this region. Traipsing through fields of wheat, groves of olive trees, and patches of coriander plants, making sure everything is growing as it should. Checking the level of water in the well – it’s been flowing generously ever since the earthquake of 2004. Looking in on the presses where, come December, olives will be converted into olive oil. Eating apricots straight from the tree. Bringing bread and fruit to community members in need. Taking lunch to the imam after Friday prayers. Shopping at the market, where you can pick out your own live chicken for slaughter. Whiling away evenings in plastic chairs on the sidewalk, chatting about future prospects over mint tea and sunflower seeds. And spending the occasional night hidden away on a rooftop, furtively drinking wine and whiskey.

The latter, I must qualify, are activities distinctly reserved for men. Women generally do not show themselves outside after dark. In fact, the foundational principle of Riffi social organization seems to be that the family’s women are to be protected from the gaze of strangers’ eyes. I am told that Riffi families place great value on privacy. Life in a city apartment is unacceptable: they could never share a hallway, even a front door, with strangers. All families here thus live in the Moroccan equivalent of townhouses. The entire village is made up of them: boxlike constructions, three floors high, with colorful plasterwork facades. The ground floor provides space for a garage, or even a store; the two floors above are each outfitted as fully functional apartments, including salon, kitchen, and bathroom. This is local logic: with what essentially constitutes two separate apartments for each family, men and women can entertain separately. Male and female worlds seem in fact to constitute parallel, but completely separate domains; beyond the private realm of the immediate family, there is very little informal mixing. Even weddings are single-sex affairs.

As a foreigner and outsider I am exempted from these standards of propriety, and so I get to be there for the nightly tea or wine. But being the only woman who shows herself outside after dark, I am nevertheless an anomaly. And being a blonde woman, I’m an anomaly about which people draw particular conclusions. Farid explained it to me as follows. As we drove onto the main street of Beni Bouayach, he informed me that to those who don’t know him well, the sight of us together will lead to the assumption that he has “found one” – that is, that he’s managed to find himself a European woman who will marry him for ‘papers’.

Departure is a common wish, a shared dream, a notion ever-present. There is common agreement among the people of this region that opportunity – fortune, career, a future – lies beyond. Regardless of how far the beyond on which one has set one’s sights, young adults all feel that there is little for them here among these hills. They’ve grown up with fathers, uncles, older cousins away in northern Europe, and these migrants’ stories have nourished the next generation’s dreams of leaving. Each summer, visiting emigrants’ display of European wealth and worldliness further widens the chasm between reality and desire. For the young men of this region, stunted in their masculinity and adulthood, a woman from the West can – literally – be one’s passport for departure.

For me, in turn, this region illustrates the sadness of stifled potential. The people’s stories of lack and limitation strikingly contradict the beauty of these hills, their obvious fertility. But this contradiction is born not so much of misperception; it emerges rather from the problematic relationship between the Rif and the central government. In a vicious cycle of cause and consequence, the Rif Berbers have always resisted submission to centralized power, and the government has, in subtle and not so subtle ways, consistently and systematically neglected this region. The tribes here are fiercely independent-minded, and always at the ready to fight for their autonomy. This volatile combination has helped Morocco battle for its sovereignty in the past (against the Ottomans, then the Europeans), but now poses what is perhaps the greatest threat to the power of the monarchy. A threat the government attempts to contain through isolation. This is a forgotten corner of Morocco: roads are in dangerous disrepair, there is a dire lack of schools for higher education, and no irrigation systems at all. After an earthquake devastated the region in 2004, the government failed tragically to help re-build. Internet connections are twice as slow as anywhere else, and radios receive more Spanish than domestic channels.

Apart from neglect, there is also silence. The region’s colorful and volatile past – battles, victories, independence and subjugation – has systematically been left out of the Moroccan history books. To the people themselves, stories of oppression are often too shameful to recount. This new generation of stunted young men has thus, sadly, grown up ignorant of its people’s illustrious past, of the sagas that link them to this ground. They are unaware of their rootedness – laboring under a sense of lightness, perhaps, that further nourishes their dreams of a beyond?

Without government investment, the community around Beni Bouayach has become surprisingly self-sufficient. Community funds (much of it from emigrants in Europe) have financed the installation of electricity, the construction of new housing, and the charity that cares for those who are less fortunate. Without government investment the community is, unfortunately, not (yet?) able to create long-term opportunity for its people. But their pride nevertheless refuses to be stunted. The people find subtle, daily ways of resisting subjugation. Their language is alive and vibrant; used often use to tell jokes at the expense of Arabs, or to grunt at the presence of “er makhzen,” the government.

Yet, lest we forget that even this remote and neglected corner of the country still bows under the rule of its King, the government has nevertheless managed to put its stamp on the region. Frequent displays of the Moroccan flag and portraits of Mohammed VI help to remind us that the notion of a Rif Republic remains but a mere nostalgic idea…

Reflections on Fieldwork at the Clinic

2009-11-26T16:57:00.002Z

Tomorrow marks the end of my fourth week of research. And after twenty mornings of observation, 4 different wards, and more than 50 typed pages of field notes, I’m more excited than ever about this project.

I start each day at the réunion de staff, a meeting in which the residents and professors get together to discuss all new admissions of the day before. Afterwards I head to one of the wards, where I observe the daily goings-on. I sit in on medical consultations or meetings between nurses. I participate in recreational activities for patients, walk around the ward, look at the schedules and announcements posted in the nurses’ office, get a sense of the way in which records are kept, listen to doctors discussing treatment options with one another, or simply sit in a chair and watch. I have informal conversations with the staff, in which I’ll ask them about their method of diagnosis, their protocols for treatment, or about the backgrounds of their patients, and they’ll ask me about my research plans.

For the moment I am simply an observer; apart from these informal conversations I’m not engaging in any actual interviews yet. But even just these brief mornings of watching have produced more data than I had ever expected at this stage of research. Everything I see and hear at the Clinic is material. I’m picking up data and learning new things at multiple levels, all at the same time. I’m learning linguistically: I write down the French terms for disorders, symptoms, and other phenomena. I’m becoming so used to being in a francophone hospital environment that I’m beginning to have trouble thinking of the English equivalent for words like prise en charge (care), sevrage (withdrawal), or infirmier chef (head nurse?).

At the same time, I’m learning on a medical level: I’m becoming familiar with psychiatric symptomatology, its clinical presentations, and its biological consequences. I frantically write down every snippet of general medical information that I glean from my observations, and spend most of my afternoons googling the names of medications I’ve seen prescribed, the workings of different neurotransmitters, or the DSM-IV description of personality disorders.* I’m learning about the Clinic’s procedures for admission, treatment, and discharge, as well as national laws governing hospitalizations, and am getting a sense of how clinical observations are recorded and communicated between doctors and nurses.

And finally, I’m gathering ethnographic data. I observe how residents interact with their professors, how doctors talk to nurses, and how staff communicate with patients. I’m getting a sense of how patients express their symptoms, and how doctors listen to these explanations. I’m taking note of the gender balance and how this affects the relationship between patients and staff. I’m beginning to get a sense of how psychiatric theories interact with popular belief in spirits and magic, how medical knowledge is imparted to students, and of how medical expertise lends power.

All of this data makes for almost incessant note-taking, and a bit of internal conflict sometimes about what to write down, and what to let slide. In that sense I’m also learning about myself as an observer – about what I pick up on and what I miss, what I consider important, and how I position myself vis-à-vis the people among whom I am doing research. I spend a fair amount of time talking to two other foreign women spending some time at the hospital – a student of clinical psychology and a psychiatrist. As we exchange impressions and reflections, I find a lot of my observations reinforced, but also curiously take note of differences in interpretation, or of interesting bits of information I had completely missed. Their viewpoint is valuable to me – the extra eyes and minds add more data to my notes, but also allow me an additional dimension of reflection on what I’m seeing. Their experience of clinical practice in France provides me with a valuable comparison for the things that strike me about psychiatry here, and provide me with a sounding board on which I can test some of my own budding interpretations.**

This wealth of input only makes me hungry for more, and I’ve never felt more motivated or energetic about my project. At the same time, however, the wealth of sensory input gets a little overwhelming sometimes. There is so much to take in that I feel as though I’m left without enough time to process it all, to wrap my head around it and make sense out of what I’m seeing. As far as my ethnographic work is concerned, this might not be something to worry too much about. There’s something to say, perhaps, for just diving in at this stage of the project – of immersing myself completely and just letting it all flood over me. It might even be too early to try and distill some interpretations or theories out of what I’ve seen – if I draw conclusions now, perhaps I’ll blind myself to new evidence that might contradict what I think I’ve learned?

But personally, it’s difficult sometimes to relinquish that sense of control, that sense of knowing what’s going on. And for the purposes of this blog, I do wish that I were a little bit more able to distill a few coherent ideas out of my field notes, just enough for a post or two. There is so much I want to write about – the communication between doctors and patients, the concept of ‘psychiatric expertise’ and the way in which it shapes that communication, the notion of hysteria (so outdated a term in Europe and the US, but so commonly used here), the role of gender in shaping interactions, treatment plans, and diagnoses. All of these ideas are floating around in my mind, but I just can’t seem to find enough clarity to pin them down with adequate, descriptive words. Hopefully I’ll find a bit of coherence in due course. I’ll try to keep posting about once a week – and I’ll try to return to writing about things other than my research, as well.

* This level of learning has made me particularly conscious of how much I miss medicine. How intrigued I am not just by the human mind, but by the human body as well. I don’t want to use the word regret because I don’t for a moment regret choosing anthropology, but I do regret making a choice in general; I regret having decided at some point that I wouldn’t be able to do both medicine and anthropology. It’s never too late, I suppose, and in theory I could apply for medical school once I finish my PhD. When that time comes, I guess I’ll have to ask myself what I’d rather do: start another rigorous four years of education when I’m in my early thirties, or spend the rest of my life knowing that a part of me will always miss medicine?
** In addition, I’m finding it incredibly valuable to be able to talk about what I’ve seen with others who have shared the experience. I’m observing at the Clinic’s emergency room this week, and a few of the people who’ve come in for psychiatric help have really struck me in their sadness and hopelessness. More so than on the other wards, observation this week has affected me emotionally, and it’s been helpful to talk about these observations with others who were there.

Ethnography of a Psychiatric Ward: The Meaning of Psychosis

2009-11-18T08:46:00.000Z

“What’s the point?” she asks. She looks fragile as she sits in that chair, her shoulders drooping and her face nearly hidden by the pink hoodie she’s pulled over her hair. She looks at the doctor with a bit of frustration in her eyes, her hands digging themselves deeper into her hoodie’s pockets.

“It’s gone, and I feel good. Isn’t that all that matters?”

Doctor Mourad leans back, and lets out a subtle sigh. Then he responds:

“But it’s important that we talk about this, you and me, so that I can help you.”

The consultation is suddenly interrupted when the door swings open and another resident walks in. She shares this consultation room with Dr. Mourad, and she’s here to pick up her bag. As the two physicians exchange a few pleasantries, I notice the patient’s head sinking lower and lower, until it is cradled by her hands. Rhythmic tremors running through her shoulders betray that she is crying.

But she has not given in. After the female resident leaves, Dr. Mourad tries again, to no avail. He is hoping to convince his patient to talk about her experience of possession by what she calls a diable, a devil (or, in Arabic, a shaitan*). I cannot help but think that he’s doing so in part for my benefit; ever since the doctors on this ward have learned about my research interests, they are constantly calling me in to observe their interaction with patients who claim to have been possessed or cursed – an experience the doctors categorically define as a particular kind of hallucination. None have been as unwilling to discuss the subject as this young woman, and I am struck by her defensiveness.

Her next argument calls on notions of expertise and authority, as she hopes to excuse herself from the responsibility of having to explain what happened to her:

“You shouldn’t ask me,” she says. “I don’t know anything about jnoun, diables or shaitans. All I know is what it says in the Qur’an. If you want any explanations, don’t ask me. You need to talk to an expert, some kind of scholar.”

The doctor tries to explain that he’s not interested in theory; he just wants to know what happened to her. But it’s no use, and a few minutes later we escort the patient back to her room. She’s staying in the closed women’s ward: a dreary concrete courtyard where about twenty five very sick women spend their days doing little more than wandering around. Paint flakes off the walls and ceilings, there is little more than a few rusty old hospital beds to sit on in the recreational room, and a stale smell of abandonment hangs in the air. It is a far cry from the state of the art facilities where I spent my first week at the Clinic. Having moved on to a third ward at the time of writing, I’ve learned that this closed ward is by no means representative of the rest of this hospital. Nevertheless, it struck me in its sadness, and I think the difference in environment between this and other wards is worth exploring.

The dreariness of this ward is matched by a complete lack of stimulation or activity for the patients. Doctors tell me that a hair dresser comes to the ward to do the patients’ hair once in a while, and nurses will sometimes hang out with the women, listening to music or dancing a little. But there is no exercise equipment like there was on the addiction ward, nor are there musical instruments, books, or a television. Nothing is allowed on the ward; in their psychosis or suicidality, a fair amount of these women cannot be trusted not to do something harmful. On the one hand, I wonder how these women make it through the day, with nothing to do. On the other, even I can see that the majority of these patients are too sick to be able to participate in any kind of activity.

Most of the patients on this ward suffer from a psychotic disorder. They are heavily medicated: each morning, the nurses enter the ward with a tray full of Haldol, Largactil,** and other anti-psychotics and tranquilizers. The medication is often administered by injection – pills can be refused, I guess. There is no privacy; each room accommodates five to six women. Without curtains or doors to hide behind anywhere, patients are injected right there on the courtyard, en plein public.

Despite this medication, the women seem truly sick. Many of them spend their days walking around the courtyard, talking animatedly to the voices in their head. They slur their speech when they talk, and jump from one subject to the next. They crowd around the locked glass door that separates the ward from the nurses’ area, and sing famous Sherine songs.*** When they notice me, sitting there with the staff, they blow me kisses, and call out that I’m trop belle. A few of them even begin to recite the Fatiha, the first verses of the Qur’an. I’m struck by this ‘strange’ lack of inhibition, and take it as a sign that these women are really sick. Nevertheless, when that glass door opens and they all come in to greet me, they are friendly, and normal, and simply curious. They just want to know my name, where I’m from, how I’m doing. The next day, I see genuine recognition in their eyes as they greet me again.

A lot of the patients, the doctors tell me, believe they have been possessed, or cursed. One of the residents tells me, almost self-consciously, that for a psychiatrist, this is a hallucination. An anthropologist might feel differently, she adds, but for her, it is part of a psychotic symptomatology. I don’t have time to respond – she’s in consultation with a patient at the moment, and simply turns to me once in a while to ‘translate’ what the patient is saying into psychiatric terms. But it makes me realize that I need to come up with a ready answer for questions such as these. I am so often asked these days if I believe in possession, or in the effectiveness of countercurses. Regardless of how I might feel about these issues, I think I’ll say “I don’t know.” True objectivity is an illusion, I know that, but I think it’s a better idea not to weigh in on these questions with the people who are participating in my research, and try to maintain some kind of neutrality.

A central question in my research, however, is what happens when two different theories about mental illness meet. What does it do to a person’s experience of being sick, when his or her belief about possession is explained (dismissed?) by a psychiatrist as a ‘hallucination’? I cannot help but wonder if this has anything to do with that young woman’s unwillingness to tell Dr. Mourad about her experience. As we talked about her reticence, Dr. Mourad explained that she might worry that her diable will come back if she talks about it. Alternatively, she might be afraid that talking about devils will lead doctors to conclude that she warrants longer hospitalization. Dr. Mourad, however, feels that she will not truly be well enough to leave until she is able to talk openly about her experience. I can see his point; I tend to believe in the idea that talking – externalizing – provides a necessary kind of catharsis. Nevertheless, I wonder what it’s like for a patient like this young woman; to be asked to open up about a very traumatic experience to someone who might not agree about what that experience meant, and who has no more than twenty minutes a day to speak with you.

All of it makes me wonder about the nature or definition of ‘pathology’. Who has the right to define what’s normal and what’s not, and who gets to decide what it all means, or what should be done about it? I’m thinking here not just about the meaning of possession. Aside from these beliefs, another problem most of the patients had in common was a history of prostitution. Nearly every patient I met on the ward had, according to the doctors, engaged in some kind of prostitution at some moment in time. This behavior was often seen as a symptom of illness: a sign of mania, or psychosis. Some patients talked openly about it all, while others denied ever having sold their bodies – a sign, for the psychiatrist, of that patient’s impaired judgment. I couldn’t help but wonder, though, whether it might not be at least a little understandable that a woman might deny having engaged in something considered to be so shameful?

In addition, I wonder how much cultural beliefs and social expectations have weighed in on the high occurrence of ‘prostitution’-as-pathology among these patients. Morocco is a modernizing country, but extramarital sex is still, and will probably long remain, highly unacceptable for a woman. Does that mean, I wonder, that the definition of ‘prostitution’ here in Morocco is broader than ours? Once, when discussing an alcoholic male patient’s extramarital affairs with girls, a resident insisted that he must have slept with prostitutes. Anything else was simply not possible, she said; any girl who has extramarital sex is by definition a prostitute. Perhaps some of these female patients had engaged in behavior that, by Western standards, would not necessarily be termed prostitution? And in the same way, I wonder if the particular unacceptability of extramarital sex might mean that doctors here are more likely than elsewhere to label promiscuous behavior as ‘pathological’? Excessive promiscuity is often included on lists of the kind of reckless behavior that the DSM-IV lists as a possible symptom of mania, or various personality disorders. Nevertheless, I wonder if cultural mores weigh in here to create this particular tendency to label people with deviant sexual behavior.

I spent a lot of my time on this ward in a chair in the nurses’ lounge, observing the women on the ward through that glass door. And as they crowded up against that door to wave or sing to me, I began to wonder: what really is the difference between me and them? Aren’t we both curiously and unabashedly observing the other? I am as interested in them as they are in me. As a foreigner I, too, don’t always behave according to the social rules. Aren’t I, then, as abnormal as they are? When the nurse pulls a screen in front of the door, I am not sure whose gaze she is trying to avert – theirs, or mine.

I had hoped to do my research on this ward, but the level of pathology might pose a problem. I can interview only those who are capable of understanding the goals of my research, and of providing informed consent for participation. I did not meet a single patient who would have met those criteria – an observation later corroborated by most of the residents. I haven’t yet visited the open women’s ward, but hope this may be a better fit. Part of me is relieved, not to have to spend a few months on that dreary, tragic ward. But the other part of me continues to think about the women I’ve met there, wondering how they’re doing now, half a week since I last saw them, wondering also where they might end up, once they leave the Clinic.

* though curiously, this woman argued that a diable is not the same thing as a shaitan. It was one of the few things she was willing to explain – though she couldn’t tell us what exactly the difference was. I continue to be intrigued by the way in which Moroccans mix French and Arabic - and her distinction between these two concepts interestingly contradicts the idea that the two languages are conceptually interchangeable...
** Largactil is known as thorazine in the US, I believe.
*** Sherine is a famous middle eastern singer. Egyptian, most likely.

Ethnography of a Psychiatric Ward: Addiction in Rabat

2009-11-12T08:12:00.001Z

Mr. Abbas is a thin, clean-shaven man in his fifties. He is well-spoken, but restless as he meets with his treating physician, a young petite woman in her second year of psychiatric residency. Sitting on the edge of his seat, he keeps getting up and walks around the room, as though he is acting out the story he is telling. He is beating around the bush, and the resident repeatedly calls him on it: you’re not answering my question, she tells him.

He isn’t providing the resident with the information she is looking for. Neither is he speaking her language: while she poses her questions in Moroccan Arabic, he insists on answering in French, and utters not a word in dialect throughout the meeting. At first I think he may be doing this for the benefit of the observers in the room: two master’s students in clinical psychology, a psychiatrist from France, and myself. Our presence probably did have something to do with his conduct. But there was more to Mr. Abbas’ very performative behavior.

Mr. Abbas is an alcoholic, and he has checked himself into the Clinic in order to conquer his addiction. When his doctor introduces us, the observers, during this particular consultation, Mr. Abbas responds with a polite and pleasant enchanté, and proceeds to introduce himself with a quite elaborate story. He is a successful lawyer, he tells us, well-educated and fluent in French. Over the course of the consultation he talks about his practice, his nice car, his wife – none of which the resident asked about. After he leaves, his doctor tells us that Mr. Abbas hasn’t worked in three years. His wife has left; in fact, the life he just described to us has been destroyed by his addiction. What emerges at that point is the sad picture of a man dethroned; a man who has lost everything he thought to validate his existence; a man who desperately tries to maintain an image he knows he has already lost.

And it made me wonder. What does alcoholism mean for a Moroccan man? Alcoholism is destructive to anyone, but in this country, where alcohol is forbidden by religious decree, what does it mean to be an alcoholic? What does it do to Mr. Abbas’ sense of who he is? To his identity as a man, as a Moroccan, as a Muslim?

Mr. Abbas is but one of the patients I met during my week of observation on the service de toxicomanie, the Clinic’s addiction ward. It was the inaugural week of my research project; though I will not actually be able to do anything I mention in my research proposal until I obtain authorization from a local ethics board, the Clinic’s director has given me permission to kick-start my research with a period of general observation. Dr. Rachidi and I designed a schedule that would put me on a different ward each week, and as of last Monday, I spend every weekday morning looking around, shadowing doctors and nurses, and sitting in on meetings and rounds.

The service de toxicomanie has been running for a number of years, but recently moved into new housing: a newly built two-storey construction just inside the hospital grounds. Clearly the recipient of considerable funding, the service stands out from the rest of the hospital by virtue of its size and its modern and clean appearance.

But despite its large quarters, the service is small. Aside from Dr. Rachidi, who is the attending on this ward (here she is called professeur), the place is staffed by two residents (résidents) and about three nurses per shift. The number of patients, too, is small; I can count them on my two hands. All are male, and most are there because of their dependence on alcohol. From a poster that charts the service’s functioning over the past five years, I learn that this is the norm for the ward. The men range from late adolescence to late adulthood, and come from equally varied backgrounds. I see wedding rings on a few hands, and I wonder about their families, their friends. Who comes to visit them? I’ve already learned that the patients themselves are not allowed to communicate with the outside world; one of the first things I am shown is the therapeutic contract that each patient is asked to sign upon admission (all patients on this ward are admitted to the hospital voluntarily). This list of rights and obligations indicates that each patient is to surrender all means of communication. A total of two visiting hours are scheduled for the weekends. I wonder what this restriction of contact is like for a Moroccan family – togetherness is so important here, and I get the sense that that is especially true in times of sickness. The crowds of loved ones around each hospital bed left a lasting impression on me when I visited a public hospital in Fes, a few years ago.

The average length of stay is a month, though some stay longer. When I arrive with the doctors around 9.30 every morning, the men are usually grouped together in a small courtyard off the main corridor. This is the only place where they are allowed to smoke, and all of them make eager use of this right. They lounge on benches or hang around in the doorway, chatting with one another, occasionally requesting something from a doctor or nurse. The patients don’t seem to get much of this kind of down time, however. Their days are highly structured; a weekly timetable posted on the bulletin board in the main corridor allocates every hour of every day to a particular activity. An hour of every morning is scheduled for consultations with the médecin, the doctor, and each day devotes an additional hour or two to a particular form of therapy (group discussions, during which patients discuss a theme of their own choosing, but always related to addiction and substance abuse; motivational therapy; psycho-éducation, during which awareness is created about the negative impact of substance abuse; or relaxation therapy, for instance). Afternoons and evenings promise activities of a more recreational variety, such as television, reading, ping-pong, or cards. There is time for exercise, and even for music – I have already seen the well-equipped gym and music room upstairs. It is a full schedule and indeed, it seems that the patients and staff are always either coming from one activity, or about to start another.

The doctors (and I) begin their mornings at the Clinic-wide staff meeting, where they discuss new admissions. The presentation of patients is formalized; it is formulaic and ritualistic. In contrast, on-ward communication between doctors, nurses, and patients is informal and easy. After the doctors’ arrival on the ward, the staff briefly gathers to exchange pertinent information from the past night or weekend. They meet in one of the recreational areas off the main corridor or in the nurses’ station, a round space enclosed by glass at the end of the corridor. This room is furnished with a desk and a few bookcases that hold all records, files, prescription pads, and other necessities. The station makes me think of a Foucaultian watchtower; as particular patients are discussed, I notice doctors and nurses glancing at the man in question through the glass, sometimes even pointing as they review his behavior last night.

While the Clinic-wide staff meetings are held exclusively in French, the conversation between doctors and nurses is an even mix of French and Arabic. When speaking the latter, everyone addresses one another with the familiar tu. There are jokes and laughter, and everyone speaks at once. No one wears a name tag, and only the two residents walk around in white coats. There are no pagers; just cell phones. Dr. Rachidi is warm and approachable toward everyone; while she does not hesitate to point out flaws in her residents’ approach to their prise en charge (care), her criticism is always constructive. “You’re supposed to make mistakes,” she even tells them during one particular meeting, “you’re residents, you’re here to learn, not to do everything perfectly at once.”

Both residents on this ward are female. This reflects a general Clinic-wide gender-balance: of the 22 residents being trained here, sixteen are women. Likewise, there are three women among the six professors of psychiatry that teach and practice at the Clinic. In contrast, most of the nursing staff is male. The French psychiatrist, who began a six month fellowship here during the same week that I began my observation, tells me this is common at psychiatric wards throughout the world; a big strong man is often better able to deal with aggressive patients than a woman, she explained. Nevertheless, this particular gender balance provides an interesting contrast with traditional notions of professional roles within the world of healthcare, where men are in charge as doctors, and women are nurturing nurses. It’s a contrast also with traditional Arab conceptions of masculinity and femininity – conceptions that are very much alive here in Morocco. I very much wonder what this inversion of traditional roles does to the balance of power on the Clinic’s wards – especially on a service such as this one, where the patients are so predominantly male. For patients such as Mr. Abbas, who feel so dethroned, I wonder what it’s like to be treated by a female doctor. I’m curious to see how this plays out on other wards, and it could be an interesting angle for my research.

This week, I've moved on to a different service (more ethnographic sketches to come…). Toxicomanie is not the ward where I will be doing my research. Nevertheless, I was reticent to leave – not only because I found everything about the place so interesting, or because I would like a chance to answer the questions this week has brought up. I’m also reluctant because I was finally beginning to feel a bit more comfortable with my presence there. I had become familiar with the doctors, the nurses, the patients, the languages. I was losing some of my reticence about bothering busy doctors with my questions, or disturbing a patient with an inappropriate question. I am more of a wait-and-see person than a go-get-‘em-girl, preferring the slow, subtle approach to the direct and bold one. This can work well in anthropology, but not necessarily during the set-up phase of research; I often have to push myself to be assertive and ask the questions I want an answer to.

But I’ll do as much pushing as I have to. This week has proven, I think, that it pays to be direct, to stop worrying about things like bothering people, or misunderstanding them, or worse – not being able to make myself understood. For the first two days on the service de toxicomanie, I was incredibly anxious about issues of communication. I worried that I wouldn’t understand everything; my exhaustion at the end of each day reminded me how much energy it takes me to follow a conversation in medical French or Arabic. I panicked every time I realized I’d been dozing off and had missed a crucial turn in the discussion – something that tended to happen particularly at those moments that I spent worrying. I was even more nervous not being able to make myself understood: of tripping over words or, worse, not being able to think of any. I spent those mornings’ rounds in fear that I’d be asked to explain my research, to explain why I chose Morocco. But on day three I began to realize that, despite exhaustion, I had actually been understanding enough to have a good sense of what’s going on. And later that day, I suddenly found myself in various conversations, perfectly able to describe what I was doing there, even receiving a compliment on my French. And so I moved on to the next ward, perhaps not fearlessly, but at least with a good dose of faith that maybe, just maybe, this project of mine will be doable, after all…

Things to Do in Rabat on a Saturday Night

2009-11-09T17:31:00.002Z

Last Saturday night, I believe temporarily forgot that I was in Morocco.

Around seven PM, I met up with a group of NIMAR-affiliated ladies downtown. After a pleasant dinner at Le Petit Beur, a small restaurant close to the Parliament, we headed over to Théatre Mohammed V for “ABBA the Show,” a big spectacle, as the Théatre always calls it, of classic ABBA songs put on by a sizeable and very enthusiastic ABBA cover band. Complete with lighting effects, original ABBA members and 1970s costumes, the show was fabulously entertaining. The theater was packed with fans screaming and singing aloud so fervently that one would have thought the original singers were up there on stage. Had it not been for subtle references to Morocco through the lighting effects (a ‘DH’ sign lighting up on the stage backdrop amidst Euro and Dollar symbols during the song Money, Money, Money; a collection of red and green lights creating an image of the Moroccan flag at the end of the show – and sending the crowd into ecstasy), the entire ambience would have made me forget where I was.

The Théatre National Mohammed V is one of Rabat’s primary theater venues. It offers a wide variety of entertainment to the Rbati public, from plays in Moroccan dialect to Flamenco concerts and hip hop dance performances – to quote a few offers from the upcoming winter program. But those who seek to spend a soirée out on the town have more than just this theater to choose from. The various cultural institutes scattered around the city center (The German Goethe Institut, the Spanish Instituto Cervantes, and the Institut Français, for instance) each offer their own selection of music, films, and other performances around town. The result is a weekly offer of cultural activities that will certainly not leave you wanting for entertainment.

You might start your cultural evening out at one of Rabat’s many decent restaurants – in one’s choice of price range and cuisine – and end it at a swanky bar or nightclub. For contrary to what one might think about a country where alcohol is prohibited by law to 99% of the population, nightlife in Morocco’s larger cities is alive and thriving. The offer of venues runs the full gamut from dark and dingy dive bars, where the only women present are there in a professional capacity, to hip and trendy nightclubs. The latter are places to see and be seen. Dressed to the nines, groups of men and women lounge around the table they’ve reserved, making their own drinks from the bottle of alcohol they’ve purchased and the mixers – coke, sprite – they’ve been given for free. They laugh, chat, and occasionally dance – first to American hip hop, later to the techno and house that follow it. Girls wear revealing tops and skinny jeans; boys wear shiny fitted shirts and leather shoes. There is an ease of interaction between the sexes that seems to contrast with daytime social conventions.

Whenever I am out, whether it be at the theater or at a club, I cannot help but wonder about the identity of the people I see around me. Who frequents these places – from what socio-economic background do they originate? The nightclubs I have seen are a swanky affair. There seems to be an elitism to the whole experience, a suggestion of luxury; the advertisement of a certain level of wealth and a certain brand of modernity. It’s in the way people dress – the glitter, the brand names – but it’s also in the money one ostensibly spends for a night of dancing. The cover charge for Amnesia, one of Rabat’s most famous clubs, is 200 Dirhams – a small fortune, if you imagine that a large proportion of the Moroccan population lives on a salary of 1500 a month or less. Admission comes with a free drink, but any subsequent beverage runs at least 80 Dirhams.

However, my friend Hatim tells me that the real regulars never pay. The secret, he tells me, is to get to know the bouncer. To strike a deal, and get a discount. It’s not the upper classes that one will encounter at the club, he explained – those elites have their own, private, establishments. No, the trendy patrons at Amnesia are individuals just like you and me; they’ve just managed to bargain their way inside, to an evening of luxury at a discount price. Once again, the suggestion emerges that everything in Morocco is negotiable, and nothing is as simple as it seems (… but the true elite always remains out of reach).

Yet my question remains. Who, then, frequents places like Amnesia? Where do they come from, and where do they live? What kind of jobs do they hold, where do they go to school, and how does their behavior at the club fit into their daytime social roles?

When thinking about these questions I often catch myself imagining each of these nameless young individuals to be a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde – possessors of a nighttime alter ego whose behavior is incommensurable with their daytime identity. I’m intrigued by the contrast that seems to exist between the social conventions of Moroccan society, and the vibe I encounter at these clubs. On this blog, I often write about the various ways in which ‘tradition’ is idealized and upheld by Moroccan society, and the ways in which particular interpretations of ‘modernity’ emerge and interact with old customs and conventions. I’m interested in the ways in which these two concepts seem, ostensibly, to contradict one another. And so I take note of the way in which I see girls dress and behave at Amnesia – and then contrast it with the grumpy man Fatima and I once encountered as we walked home at 3 AM, who asked my friend if her mother knew she was out so late, and then added that she must be a prostitute.

But if there is one thing I have learned about Morocco, it is that nothing is ever as simple as it seems. ‘Modernity’ and ‘tradition’ are not entities but ideas with very fluid boundaries. They are not polar opposites but rather converging and diverging ideologies about the meaning of our socio-cultural rules and conventions. We all live lives that combine elements of the modern with notions of tradition, and this need not make us Jekyll-and-Hydes, unless we ourselves allow it to. So, too, for the men and women I see at Amnesia. Because in the end, what is so strange about a girl who dances in an outfit she’d never wear to work, or a boy who purchases more alcohol than he’d ever admit to his parents? Don’t we all behave a little more freely under the cover of dimmed lighting, thumping beats, and a bit of alcohol?

About pregnancy

2009-11-05T08:00:00.000Z

Last Friday, Moroccan blogger calabamuse posted an article about the following magazine cover:

This is the November issue of Femmes du Maroc, and the cover prefaces a multi-page feature on pregnancy. Beside the article discussing this particular television personality’s impending accouchement (labor, childbirth), the magazine includes an exposé on the deplorable state of OB-GYN facilities at public hospitals and clinics, advice about how to deal with post-partum depression, a description of a cesarean section, and even a special on fashionable maternity clothes.

I picked up this issue myself last Thursday while shopping at Marjane, and was completely intrigued by the provocativeness of the cover. And indeed, this is the main theme of Calabamuse’s thought-provoking post. The writer suggests that pregnancy, like many other issues relating to sex or the reproductive system, is a phenomenon that makes Moroccan society highly uncomfortable:

The exclusionary and sometimes castigating treatment pregnant women are subjected to is a leading cause of abortion in Morocco where the number of out of wedlock pregnancies have dramatically risen. The pool of medical doctors performing abortions today has grown exponentially. They charge 3000 Dirhams ($391.00). Additionally, an increased number of women, especially in rural areas where medical oversight is minimal and sometimes non-existent, die from standard pregnancy complications.
The message of the magazine’s cover is a loud and clear confirmation of the self: I am pregnant; I am beautiful, and I exist. I agree. In our society, pregnant women need to feel less excluded and be viewed in a more gratifying fashion. For a country like Morocco, where television channels are flipped at the mere sight of a man an a woman kissing, where, in neighborhood foodstuff stores, menstrual pads are stuffed in a black plastic bag to conceal them from the embarassed looks of customers, the idea is outrageous.

Intrigued by this apparently ambiguous regard for pregnancy, I decided to ask around. I used a word that Calabamuse didn’t, and ultimately proved to be too strong a connotation: was pregnancy hshouma, shameful?

Yes, Farid told me, he did think that pregnancy is shrouded in a kind of hshouma, but I needed to be aware that there are two ways to translate this culturally powerful term. Pregnancy is not so much a source of shame, he explained, as it is a source of embarrassment. There are certain topics you simply don’t discuss with certain people, like your parents or your boss, and pregnancy is one of them. It’s a matter of respect, Farid added. As he said this, I suddenly remembered how reluctant Karima, the NIMAR’s housekeeper, had been to discuss her pregnancy in the presence of our director or any other male associate.* Exactly, Farid said. This reluctance wasn’t shame so much as it was just the maintenance of a certain kind of propriety.

A new part-time co-worker at the NIMAR, Aicha, likewise didn’t think pregnancy was seen as shameful. She did, however, remember being told to cover up her pregnant belly in looser clothing when going outside, and she recalled how surprised her parents had been to find out that she had been open about the development of her second pregnancy toward her young son. There did seem to be a kind of discomfort about open manifestations of pregnancy, she concluded. Her environment tended to explain this as a way of avoiding the evil eye.**

These stories do betray a clear sense of ambiguity with regard to the phenomenon of pregnancy. It doesn’t seem to be a source of outright, negative shame, but it certainly makes people uncomfortable. It’s the clear connection to sexual intercourse, Farid explained with slight embarrassment. Pregnancy may be the source of new life, but it is also an unconcealable confirmation of a woman’s nature as a sexual being.

And that, I think, is true for every civilization on earth. I think that pregnancy may harbor that double meaning for almost all of us, because it lies at the heart of the very conflicted way in which nearly every culture deals with human sexuality. Sex is powerful: not only because it is one of our most primal and strongest instinctual drives, but also because it is fundamental to the propagation of our species and civilization. It signifies the glory of future development, but in its sheer primal power can also lead to utter chaos and the destruction of any kind of social order. This is why nearly every civilization has sought to exercise control over its society through the strict regulation of sex.

And let’s not forget the Madonna/Whore complex that torments so many of us. We want to see women as mothers, as the innocent and morally upright nurturers who teach our future generations about right and wrong – but we also want to see women as sexual objects, as the embodiment of sexual desire. Perhaps because we are conscious of the potentially destructive power of sex, we see these two identities as polar opposites that cannot be reconciled with one another – yet they are merged, in the phenomenon of pregnancy.

And so, as curious as I think the abovementioned attitudes toward pregnancy are, I don’t think the ambiguity of it is typically Moroccan, per sé. The way in which it is expressed may be culturally specific, but I’m inclined to believe that this particular stance is one we all have in common as humans who are overwhelmed by the power of their own sexuality. I agree with Calabamuse that pregnancy must be celebrated as something beautiful – but I think a larger problem highlighted by this month’s Femmes Du Maroc is the deplorable state of OB-GYN facilities in the country’s public hospitals and clinics.*** These places suffer from a desperate lack of resources, which results in understaffing, a lack of necessary equipment, and thus a lack of adequate care. Patients are obligated to purchase and bring all necessary materials by themselves: from towels to sedatives to suturing thread, it is the patient’s responsibility to make sure these items are present, because the hospital simply does not provide. Femmes Du Maroc also describes widespread corruption: nurses and other staff provide their services only in exchange for ‘bonuses’ of a few hundred Dirhams. Public healthcare services are officially offered free of charge, but adequate care is thus ultimately received only if one has a considerable sum of Dirhams to spend.

Add to these issues the fact that in rural areas, even such public clinics are few and far between. Obstetric facilities have this in common with nearly every other kind of medical service – including that of psychiatry. Reforming the healthcare system is an important part of Morocco’s development goals, and this month’s Femmes Du Maroc also features an interview with Morocco’s minister of health, Yasmina Baddou, who speaks of everything that’s already been done and who is optimistic about further improvement. I’m hopeful, and curious to see what reforms and improvements will be implemented in Morocco’s healthcare system over the next few years.

* Two months ago, Karima gave birth to a baby boy. When I and a few other female NIMAR co-workers went to visit her and her family, she never talked about how the actual labor and birth had been. We didn’t ask, but amongst ourselves did speculate about how it had been. I remember finding this surprising. This is the kind of thing Dutch women talk about readily, but clearly not something Karima wanted to discuss.
** According to the literature, individuals in transitional phases are particularly susceptible to the gaze of the evil eye. Newborn babies, newlyweds, and pregnant women are often cited as examples. The evil eye can be seen as a kind of curse that can lead to all kinds of malaise. If caught, it can be fought off in a variety of ways, including herbal concoctions or counter-spells. A shouafa, or medium, can often help.
*** At the time of writing, Femmes Du Maroc’s website did not yet publish the article. But here is their website.

Returned

2009-11-04T18:51:00.000Z

After a vacation of what turned out to be about five weeks, I am back in Rabat. I won’t deny that I miss home and that this kind of extended vacation was exactly what I needed, but I’m also happy to be back and excited to get started on my research. As of this past Monday, I’ve started spending my mornings at the Clinic, where I have begun a period of general observation. Until my permission from the local Moroccan ethics commission comes in, I’ll spend a week on each of the Clinic’s wards, following doctors and nurses around as they go about their work. So far, it’s been utterly amazing. I feel as though the three mornings I’ve observed so far have already provided me with enough material for twice as many blog posts, so if I can work my random observations into a coherent post, I’ll be sharing some of my experiences with you soon. In the meantime, now that my vacation is over, I hope to be back to my regular schedule of posting twice a week… I hope I still have some readers left! If so, thanks for sticking around…

Dreaming in Morocco

2009-10-10T19:56:00.003Z

In lieu of a written post, I'm going to present you with a visual today. This was sent to me by Hatim, my good friend from Fes. I'm grateful to him for sharing it with me, and will now pass it along to you.

This is a short film entitled "Dreaming in Morocco." It was made in 2007 by Pamela Nice, an independent filmmaker from Minnesota. Hoping to dispel the stereotypes (and perhaps ignorance) that we in the West often hold about Arab youth, Nice interviews a set of young adults in Morocco about their dreams and aspirations. The individuals featured in this film come from all walks of life, and thus showcase some of the incredible diversity that renders Morocco such an intriguing country. The film does not delve into the societal and political issues that confront these youth as they pursue their dreams, and as such does little more than scratch the surface of the true complexity of life in Morocco - but it's an interesting, well-made, and thought provoking film nonetheless. Enjoy!

Running in the park

2009-10-01T14:41:00.002Z

Last night, I was to have arrived back in Casablanca. I would have de-boarded the plane around nine thirty (had the Air Arabia flight from Brussels not experienced any delays, of course), and I would have tried to catch the ten PM train to Rabat – entering the country would have gone smoothly, because I wouldn’t have checked any luggage.

But in reality, I cancelled both this flight and the one that would have taken me from Chicago to Brussels, and now remain, for the time being, at my parents’ house in Hyde Park. The short version of the story is that, as a Legal Permanent Resident of the United States, one cannot just go and spend two years in a foreign country without keeping the authorities abreast of your intentions and activities. Which is what I am now doing, by means of an application for what is called a re-entry permit.

Hopefully this will be no more than a few weeks’ delay – I told the Clinic that I’d like to start my research around November first, and I hope I can hold myself to that promise. But for now, I’m enjoying the changes of fall (after three years in San Diego, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen leaves change color) and keeping myself busy with episodes of Dexter, movies from Netflix, and new recipes from the Top Chef cookbook. And this morning, I went running along the trail that spans the better part of Chicago’s lakefront. It didn’t go too well – I hadn’t expected otherwise, considering that my last run dates back to the weekend before the start of Ramadan. But whether I’m running, walking, or gasping for air, it’s always a pleasure to be out on that trail and see the Chicago skyline emerging on the waterfront, right as the road curves west around 52nd street.

Ramadan was neither the first, nor the longest break I’ve ever taken from running. In fact, running has only recently become a permanent part of my life in Morocco. Until this past May, being in Morocco always entailed a dire lack of opportunity to exercise – something I tried to make up for by walking everywhere I went (to the great frustration of many a host family, who would rather see me traveling in the safe confines of a taxi).

During my first three-month stay in Morocco – it was Fes, and it was the spring of 2005 – I was advised that exercising was not really something women did. The inescapable (and highly verbalized) male gaze on the street was enough to make any woman think twice about going for a jog – and thus attract even more attention to herself by traversing the public sphere in a run, wearing exercise clothing, and sporting an iPod). Gyms, like cafés, were a man’s domain – and anyway, I was told, I wouldn’t find much there, other than some scant, outdated exercise equipment, eighties-era photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jean-Claude van Damme, and Moroccan men high on testosterone.

It simply didn’t seem as though there was much more to do than some at-home yoga. I resigned myself to this situation and concluded that exercise must be yet another ‘thing’ that separated the world of Moroccan women so inherently from that of Moroccan men. And I wondered, did the lack of exercise opportunity mean that Moroccan society entertained standards of female health and beauty that didn’t involve thinness and fitness? Or did it entail that women’s bodies will simply always be one step behind men’s in attaining those ideals?*

In any case, I didn’t pack my running shoes the next time I went to Morocco, nor did I bring them the time after that. This was never a decision I regretted, until recently. Stories from people I’d met through the NIMAR led me to discover that, where exercising is concerned, Rabat is no Fes. In my neighborhood alone, there are at least four or five gyms that offer a busy schedule of aerobics and ‘danse orientale’ classes – and every week, that schedule includes a few classes reserved exclusively for those women who wish to exercise in single-sex company.** I’ve even heard reports of actual yoga studios in Agdal – something I will definitely check out personally, if I can afford the rather hefty tuition fees.

But most importantly, there is a certain well-known park in the city’s southern quarters whose name, to most Rbatis, is virtually synonymous with ‘jogging’.

The Hilton park in Rabat is no lakefront trail, but it’s a close second. Located in Souissi, the park spans about a square kilometer of green forest situated right next to the hotel from which it takes its name.*** The park features picnic tables and soccer fields on which families spend their weekend afternoons, but mostly, this park is used by joggers: it features a 3500 meter track that runs along the perimeter and supports consistently heavy traffic, even at my preferred running time of 8 am on Saturday morning.

I encounter people of all shapes and sizes on that trail. Some of them run, and some of them walk. Some are alone, while others exercise in groups. Some listen to music while they run, and others like to chat. I certainly see more men than women, but the women are there – and they are there in all varieties. There are women in full jellaba and headscarf (sometimes topped by a baseball hat to shield against the sun), and women in running outfits like mine. Some wear tracksuits bought from a stall in the medina, and some sport gear from Nike, Zara, or Guess. There are middle-aged mothers, and there are young university students. I run past coiffed and primped groups of friends who chat, laugh, and check their phones for text messages as they stroll around the track – and I am passed by sole women who time their heartbeat as they run and monitor the speed at which they sprint around the track.

I love every minute of my weekly runs at the Hilton park. I love watching this great variety of people out on that trail, and I love the fact that this kind of thing is possible here in Morocco – not just for me as a foreigner, but for all women. And I wonder, what explains the fact that this park is here, now, in Rabat, when there was nothing like it in Fes? Is this a difference between cities – is the culture or population of Fes truly that different from Rabat? Does it perhaps reflect a change in standards of acceptable or ideal behavior that took only four years to take effect? Or is it me – did I simply not see (or take advantage of) the opportunities that existed back then in Fes?

If I have any female Moroccan readers (anyone?), what is your experience or impression of opportunities for exercising in your city, and how is the situation now in comparison to the (recent) past?

***

I always have some trouble finding inspiration for this blog when I’m not in Morocco. I’ll try to keep writing in the next few weeks as I wait for my paperwork, but I’m afraid my posts will not be all that exciting… please bear with me; I hope I’ll be back to my regular blogging schedule soon enough…

* Islamic theology shares in the very common worldwide belief that women’s bodies are impure during menstruation. According to Scripture, Muslim women cannot pray, cannot touch or read the Qur’an, and cannot fast when they are on their period. I don’t think this necessarily means that Scripture considers women to be inherently inferior to men, but I can’t help but think that this kind of thinking contributes to such a viewpoint, and it’s always made me uncomfortable. And so I wonder, could the lack of opportunity for women to exercise contribute to a general sense that women’s bodies are further away from the healthy or pure ‘ideal’ than men’s?
** For those of you who read Dutch, a friend of mine wrote a fabulous blog post about her local Rbati gym last year.
*** The ‘Hilton park’ is an unofficial moniker. I don’t actually know what the park’s actual name is, but as with many other well-known locations in Rabat, it is the moniker rather than the official name that seems to have stuck to the place.

Sign of Life

2009-09-24T17:06:00.000Z

I am temporarily home, as planned, and am reveling in the temporary comfort of family and familiarity.

However, not as planned, I’ve been busy dealing with some unexpected paperwork. My apologies for the delay in posting! Please bear with me; I should be back to my regular schedule by next week…

Wukal Ramadan - Eating Ramadan

2009-09-17T11:59:00.002Z

A curious story has been traveling the internet and Moroccan newspapers for the past three days. I am certainly not the first to report on this story and don’t want to bore you with what by now is pretty old news – but I do want to briefly highlight this incident, because it constitutes an interesting perspective on the meaning of Ramadan in Morocco.

This past Sunday, a group of young protesters that calls itself MALI (Mouvement Alternatif pour les Libertés Individuelles – the alternative movement for individual liberties) gathered at the train station in Mohammedia (between Rabat and Casablanca) for a public picnic in broad Ramadan daylight. Their intent was to protest against the Moroccan law that forbids Muslims from eating in public during this month of fasting – because, they say, not all Moroccans are Muslims. According to the latest news, it seems that this group will be persecuted for their violation of said law.

They are right, of course, and in making this point they highlight a sticky issue that complicates the enforcement of a number of Moroccan laws. The Moroccan legal code includes a number of ordinances that are inspired by and based on religious proscriptions. An example is this particular ordinance against eating in public during Ramadan; another is the prohibition against the purchase of alcohol. In recognition of the fact that not all Moroccans are Muslims, the law officially applies only to those who abide by the tenets of Islam. But the issue is this: how does one determine, exactly, who is Muslim, and who is not? The Moroccan Carte Nationale (National Identity Card, affectionately called “la carte”) does not document a citizen’s religious affiliation, and as far as I know there is no other moment or way in which such affiliation is recorded. In the end, it is simply assumed (and every much expected) that all Moroccans are, in fact, Muslim.* And that is where the problem lies: without official documentation, religious affiliation is ultimately judged by appearance. If you look and behave as a Moroccan, you are expected to abide by Islamic proscriptions – in the same way that a European attempting to enter a mosque will be subjected to extreme testing in order to prove his or her Muslim identity.**

This particular incident points out that this kind of legal arrangement doesn’t work. You cannot enforce a law that applies only to a select group of people, if you have nothing but appearance to go on in distinguishing this group from any other. Appearance is always an imperfect measure, and even more so in the case of religion. Headscarves and burkas aside, religion cannot be read on someone’s body; it is not a biological trait.

This group is not the first to call attention to the problems involved with such legal arrangements. I remember a brief article in TelQuel a few months ago, in which the author called attention to the flawed logic behind the enforcement of the prohibition against buying alcohol. Just like this group of protesters, this writer remonstrated that you cannot and should not judge religion by appearance.

Yet in practice, the laws on alcohol do not lead to that much daily conflict, and most Moroccans have little trouble purchasing their alcohol. The infraction of drinking ranks much lower on the scale of gravity than does the ingestion of food during Ramadan. I’ve written before about the incredible cultural weight of fasting during this month. More so than any other pillar of Islam, participation in Ramadan is essential to the reinforcement of Moroccan identity. I suggested in that piece, and still think, that Ramadan embodies the essence of what Moroccans consider to be the hallmark of their culture: hospitality, openness, community-orientation, solidarity – and religion, of course. The result is that eating during Ramadan, unlike the drinking of alcohol, is much more than a religious infraction. Fasting is not just about God, but about the community – about cultural belonging.

It is this cultural weight, I think, that explains the gravity of this particular incident. These protesters did much more than violate a religious law – they flouted one of the pillars of national identity. A few reactions to the various blog posts that reported on this incident seem to read these actions as just that. They denounce this incident as detrimental to the country, or as a betrayal of the laws and of society. According to one commenter, what MALI did was “défier la loi, défier la société” (defying the law, defying society); Jillian C. York quotes another who writes that these protesters “should put this energy and effort into CONSTRUCTIVE actions, making our country better instead of Stupid events like these. Go out and DO something good for your country instead of finding everything wrong with it.”

How to evaluate this incident? Yes, these protesters violated a law, but does this law make sense? We may disagree with the application of this law, but who are we to judge? Should religious proscriptions be enforced by national law, or could one argue that religion becomes much more than a personal choice when it’s been woven so tightly into the fabric of cultural practice and social organization? And then, was MALI’s action the most effective way to claim religious and cultural freedom, or was it mostly an unproductive form of provocation?

What do you think?

* According to official statistics, about 99% is, in fact, Muslim. Of course this includes all those whose affiliation with Islam is no more than cultural.
** simply donning a headscarf will not work, I’ve ascertained from people who have tried this. You will, at the very least, have to recite something from the Qur’an.

A Blank State of Mind

2009-09-13T16:51:00.001Z

I am late in posting this week, and I apologize. I’m temporarily (hopefully…) suffering from a lack of inspiration – and a corresponding lack of excitement in my daily life. After three weeks of fasting I’ve comfortably settled into the rhythm of Ramadan: the highlight of my day now falls between 8 pm and midnight, while days are spent in a stupor of semi-wakefulness. Being an absolute morning person, this means that my habitual circadian rhythm has been turned completely upside down.

I’m still glad that I decided to participate in Ramadan. I think that joining in has helped me discover aspects of this tradition that I don’t think I would have picked up on as easily, had I remained a spectator. I may still not fully understand what Ramadan is like for the average Moroccan individual (there are certain boundaries between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ status that can never be crossed, I think, no matter how hard you try), but fasting has allowed me to come a little closer to that comprehension than I would have, otherwise. I ‘get’ how acute that feeling of solidarity is, during the first week of fasting. I ‘get’ how strong and motivating the cultural imperative to fast really is, and I think I ‘get’ how intensely participation can reinforce one’s identity as a member of Moroccan society.

It has felt good to participate – despite the hunger. It feels good to join in a custom that seems to be so fundamental to the Moroccan sense of cultural identity. I enjoy the thought of being a part of something so full of meaning for Moroccans, of sharing both in its larger significance and in its smaller manifestations. Of standing in the kitchen making harira, as I smell the soup being made in kitchens across the street. Of eating that first date, knowing that everyone else in the neighborhood is likely doing the exact same thing. Of lying on the couch watching Mexican soap operas with the members of a Moroccan family, whiling away the last hour until ftour. It simply makes me feel part of something – and this is a feeling that I often miss, living alone here in Rabat.

But in all honesty, my body is – literally – exhausted and worn out by the rhythm of Ramadan. Lack of nutrition and lack of sleep have turned me into a daytime zombie whose body happily comes alive only at night, right when it should be winding down to sleep. It’s beginning to frustrate me – because while my circadian rhythm has been turned upside down, my work schedule has not. This has resulted in a complete lack of productivity that is beginning to really worry me.

To give you an idea, let me describe an average day for you – starting at 6.45 PM, the hour of ftour (the breaking of the fast):

A cannon shot and the call for sunset prayer are our sign that we are allowed to eat. Gratefully, I immediately down a full glass of water, while Farid tells me to slow down: “it’s not good to drink too fast!” he will warn, in vain, as I ignore him.

I follow the water with a date, and then turn my attention toward the hot bowl of harira (made from a package, most days, with some of my own ingredients added in) in front of me. Usually, my stomach is quite satisfied with one bowl of soup, but because our mental hunger has grown exponentially with each hour of fasting, we have filled the table with multiple plates of other delicacies that beg to be eaten. I’ll eat a croissant or a piece of quiche, some salad, and (of course) some chebakia. I’ll drink more water, then have a glass of juice.

At 8 PM, stomachs stuffed to capacity, we come alive – and thus become restless. We leave my house and take a walk downtown, reveling in the lights and activity of Ramadan evenings. We’ll stop at a café and drink our daily coffee, as we sit and do some work on our laptops.

Around 11, I come home, still full of energy. I won’t at all be hungry, but I’ll convince myself to eat some fruit – to build up some reserves for the next day of fasting. I’ll read the news online, do some writing, and then make myself go to bed. Still energetic, I’ll lie awake for an hour and a half before I fall asleep.

I’ll wake up every two hours to go to the bathroom – the liter and a half of water that I’ve had over the course of four hours will need a way to leave my body. During the first week of Ramadan, I’d also wake up at 4.30 for shour – the last meal before sunrise. I’d have some yoghurt and a date, but even with this modest amount in my stomach, I wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep for those last two hours until morning. In the interest of a few more hours of sleep, I gave up shour halfway through week two.

At seven thirty, I am woken up by my alarm. A shower does wonders to wake me up, and I usually enjoy about two to three hours of mental clarity after that. This is when I try to do the bulk of my work – because after 11 AM, I become a yawning mess of semi-wakefulness. I will continue to try to be productive despite the haze that then seems to have settled over my brain, and let frustration mount as my frequency of typing errors rapidly increases and my ability to focus on what I’m reading falls to the bare minimum.

At four or five PM, I head home and start preparations for that evening’s ftour. I’ll mince some vegetables, cut up a piece of meat, and add it to the harira from a package. I’ll put some dates on a plate, cut chunks of bread, and arrange croissants on a platter. I’ll mix work in the kitchen with brief stints of relaxation in front of the television until Farid comes over. We’ll set the table, sit down, and wait for the cannon shot – the sign that another long day of fasting is over.

It seems to me that if you persist in maintaining a regular work schedule, participation in Ramadan seems to require a trade-off between sleeping and eating. When I make sure I get enough sleep, there is no time to eat enough – and when I make sure I eat, I don’t get enough sleep. The result, so far, has been that I do not get enough of either. I am not sure how to remedy this situation, other than to stop fasting – which, with less than a week left to go, would feel like giving up.

I want to keep going. And I’m sure I’d be fine for one more week – if I didn’t have an impending important presentation to prepare for. This Tuesday, I will be presenting my research proposal to all psychiatrists at the Clinic. In French. It’s at 9 am, which luckily falls within my brief window of productivity, but I’m a little worried that in this state of mind (both the haze and the frustration over my lack of productivity), I won’t be able to prepare as well as I’d like.

Oh well. It’s only a few more days, right? And luckily, the rest of next week promises to provide a considerable share of new excitement: I’m getting my hands henna’ed on Wednesday evening, will go see some interesting art during Rabat’s annual Nuit des Galeries on Thursday night, and on Friday, finally, I fly home…

'Authentic' Moroccanness

2009-09-07T23:03:00.004Z

Today’s post on The View from Fez pointed my attention toward a travel article published yesterday in The Guardian. In this piece, author Stephen Emms defends Casablanca against those who argue that the city, with its grand boulevards, 20th century architecture, fast pace, and skyscrapers, is not truly ‘Moroccan’.

In response to these critics, Emms points to the authentically ‘Moroccan’ aspects of Casablanca that lie hidden beyond this “westernized” exterior:

“Yes, there are the tower blocks, and the five-star hotels, and the businessmen swarming around Place Des Nations-Unies, but the old medina, which dates only from the 19th century (although its ochre walls are older), spirals with timeless neighborhood life. Slip past stalls flogging teapots, watches and jewellery, all blinding in the glare of the sun, and you will discover pencil-thin alleys and tiny squares, where bleached towels cling to window sills and old men inch past in white djellabas, the shuffle of their slippers syncopating the sizzle of squid in oil. … The elegant “new medina,” called Quartier Habous, a layout of Provençal-style squares and arches built by the French as a place for Muslims to live and trade, is a clean and inviting souk selling anything from oil paintings to art deco statuettes. But even here, the “real Morocco” is nearer than you might imagine – just over the railway bridge is Rue Taroudant, from the dusty stalls of which dangle dried chameleons, hedgehogs, and live baby tortoises. “No photos!” the bearded sellers cried in unison as I whipped my camera out; these are ancient charms, after all, with their own magical powers.”

Emms here paints a stark contrast between ‘old’ and ‘new’ – between ‘western’ and ‘Moroccan’. It is precisely in the complexity of this juxtaposition that a former US Embassy worker, interviewed by Emms for this piece, finds Casablanca’s authenticity. “It’s the real deal,” she says, “like Marrakech was more than 10 years ago.” However, Emms himself seems to wonder what this mix of old and new, modern and traditional, really means for Casablanca’s status as an ‘authentic’ Moroccan city:

“Does Casa's roving eye to the future negate its past? Its art deco and neo-Moorish heritage certainly isn't as valued as you might expect: the Hotel Lincoln, opposite the Marché Central, collapsed earlier this year, and there don't appear to be any plans to salvage it. Other buildings on and around Boulevard Mohammed V (which boasts some of the most dazzling period architecture) languish unloved, as does the Parc de la Ligue Arabe. But perhaps there's something honest about such disregard - should Casablancans have to bow to their colonial past? And anyway, isn't Morocco's "real" past more than represented, as I discovered, in the medinas and back streets?”

I am impressed with the appreciative way in which both Emms and the people he’s interviewed speak of Casablanca. However, I don’t think I agree with the way in which Emms defends Casablanca’s status as a ‘real’ Moroccan city – and by extension, what he implies about what constitutes ‘authentic’ Moroccanness.

As much as Emms acknowledges, and even appreciates, the complexity and the dynamic juxtapositions that dominate modern Moroccan society, he ultimately concludes that what is truly ‘Moroccan’ lies in the country’s traditions – represented in this article by crowded medinas, jellaba’d men, and haggling for dried chameleon in dusty souqs. And that, I think, is dangerous. It superimposes one pair of polar opposites – old versus new – on top of another imagined polarity: Moroccanness versus Westernness. It creates a binary view of the world that may simplify matters, but ultimately blinds us from the complexities of reality, and minimizes a people’s agency in defining its own sense of authenticity.

First of all, associating ‘authentic’ Moroccanness with tradition, or with the past, brings up some logistical problems of definition. To start with, how do you really separate tradition and modernity, or distinguish foreign from native? Where do you draw the line between ‘authentic tradition’ and ‘foreign invasion’ – which historical influx of foreign peoples ended true and pure Moroccan culture and opened the door to foreign influence? Was it the French? Or was it the Andalusian Muslims who returned during the Reconquista? Was it the Arabs, perhaps, or even the Romans? If Morocco’s authenticity lies in the past, how far back do you have to go to find it, exactly?

Moreover, are ‘tradition’ and ‘modernization’ that easily separable? Is Morocco’s current development a manifestation of purely Western influence, and have Morocco’s ‘traditions’ remained completely untouched by outside influences? Can we really say that Casablanca’s skyscrapers are purely western, the likes of which you’d find in France, England, the United States, while the old medina of Fes has remained pristinely Moroccan? In other words, how ‘foreign’ is Morocco’s modernization, and how ‘authentic’ have its traditions remained? I think this simple juxtaposition of ‘modern’ versus ‘traditional’ blinds us to the complex reality of Morocco – the unique brand of development that has given a distinctively Moroccan flavor to Casablanca’s modernity, and the dynamic adaptation of old traditions to current circumstances. Imagine the distinctly Moroccan patterns of hierarchy and social organization that may structure a company housed in one of Casablanca’s high rises, or the traditional carpenter in the Fes medina whose work has reached a wider audience through the website he’s been able to create with a laptop and wireless internet.

But above all, the association of ‘authentic Moroccanness’ with traditions from the past is a dangerous one. By relegating Moroccanness to “timeless” traditions and picture-perfect scenes from the old medina, we deprive Morocco of a present – let alone of a future. It is the same process of thought that legitimated French colonial rule in the first half of the twentieth century. Our perception of authentic Moroccanness is a nostalgic image of medieval Arab life that we seek to preserve by freezing Moroccan culture in time and characterizing all development as ‘foreign’, and therefore invasive. It is an Orientalist process of thought that deprives ‘real’ Moroccan culture of any belonging in (or compatibility with) a modern, developing world.

This is not to say that Morocco’s medinas and traditions should not be preserved. They should – they are a part of ‘authentic’ Moroccanness that should not be forgotten. It is also not to say that foreign (Western) influence was not invasive. It was. What I mean to say is simply that we should not so starkly oppose tradition and modernity, or past and present, and attribute ‘authenticity’ to a single pole on that binary scale. Cultures, like human beings, are living, breathing, porous things, and change is a fundamental strategy of survival. Cultures, like human beings, adapt to their ever-changing environment. No culture has ever been static, and no society has ever developed in complete isolation from foreign influences. It may not always have been the pervasive, imperial, and certainly destructive, influence of the West – but foreign influence has always been a fact of life.

The notion of authenticity is ultimately a difficult one that brings up more questions than it does answers. I think that a certain tension between past and present may be inherent to the state of postcoloniality, with national identity and notions of ‘authenticity’ stuck in the middle. How do you determine what is ‘real’ and what is ‘foreign’? What parts of history constitute the foundation for national identity, and which have been written by alien conquerors? To what extent should ‘foreign’ influence be resisted, and can (should?) traditions always stand the test of time? And who has the authority, anyway, to determine the answers to all these questions? Questions of what is ‘authentic’ are persistently and consciously present in the Moroccan public consciousness. There is a palpable preoccupation with the issue of how to define the relationship between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, and nearly every political or social issue becomes a pretext for debates about the value of each for Moroccan society and identity. These are not debates that will be resolved any time soon, and I’m sure notions of ‘authenticity’ will be discussed for decades to come. But I don’t think this means that authenticity is lost, or under threat of extinction.

I don’t think that change, dynamism, or foreign influence have to undermine any culture’s status as ‘authentic’ or ‘real’. What makes a culture ‘authentic’ is not its resistance against foreign influence, but simply its particular way of developing, its reality and meaningfulness for the people whose lives it frames. What is authentic is every society’s particular way of making sense of change, of foreign influence; its way of processing, internalizing, mixing new elements with what’s already there to create new meanings, new realities. In its very combination of incredible modernity and development with a high premium on the preservation of tradition, Morocco is, in every sense of the word, authentic. Morocco is a living, breathing culture in the flux of constant change and development. Casablanca, in all its economic enormity and modernity, is as much an example of true Moroccanness as Fes is in its preservation of traditions. And it’s time that we all not only recognize, but celebrate this unique kind of authenticity.

The Power of Language

2009-09-03T08:27:00.005Z

Over the course of my conversations with the psychiatrists I interviewed last month, each practitioner explained that individuals mostly come to see them in search of la parole. Rather than a pill, in other words, patients consult a psychiatrist in private practice in the hopes of procuring a ‘talking cure.’

I found it interesting to hear that Moroccans – many of whom, according to my observations so far, seem very eager to solve an instance of bodily malaise with a quick pill – would prefer lengthy psychotherapy to pharmaceuticals. I found it surprising that there seems to be less stigma attached to counseling than there is to medication, as these psychotherapists claimed.

But what also struck me, and what I want to write about today, is the psychiatrists’ choice of the word ‘parole’. This French word can be translated as ‘speech’, or ‘spoken word’. Of course, ‘talking’ has been widely proven to be an effective form of psychiatric treatment. But what interests me here is the fact that ‘parole’ suggests such a strong emphasis on the linguistic dimensions of that activity. I don’t think that these psychiatrists ignore the myriad other dimensions of communication, but in general, I am getting the sense that Moroccan psychiatry focuses heavily on the issue of language.

Any time these psychiatrists spoke about establishing a sense of mutual understanding – and the importance of having a shared discourse on which to base that understanding – they would mention the importance of defining certain words, of ‘speaking the patient’s language’. In his writings about the history and practice of psychoanalysis in Morocco, Dr. Jalil Bennani even conceives of cultural beliefs as a kind of ‘language’. He suggests that a particular way of understanding and experiencing illness should be understood as a particular language, used to express feelings that are ultimately universal:

“Il convient d’accorder à la tradition magico-religieuse la place qui lui est due en interprétant celle-ci comme un effet de langage et non pas comme un effet ethnique. Il convient de reconnaître dans le discours magico-religieux du patient le signe d’un autre discours afin de réussir à dépasser la frontière stérile du magico-religieux et du rationnel et déplacer les conflits en vue de faire retrouver au sujet une capacité de liberté par rapport à sa propre parole."

Freely translated, he says the following: “we should see magico-religious tradition for what it is, conceiving of it as an effect of language, rather than an effect of ethnicity. We should recognize the patient’s magico-religious talk as marker of a different kind of speech,* so as to enable ourselves to transgress the sterile boundary between the magico-religious and the rational and to dissolve their conflict, so as to allow the subject to recover a capacity for liberty with regard to his own speech.”

I’ve noticed this psychiatric focus on language before – at the Clinic, for instance, when Dr. Rachidi lamented that with so few diagnostic tools available in Moroccan Arabic, doctors and patients forever risk getting stuck in a cycle of mistranslation. And this focus makes perfect sense, given the particulars of the Moroccan context.

Mutual understanding is always a crucial issue in psychotherapy. Doctor and patients may come from different (cultural, educational, economic) backgrounds, may ascribe to different ideologies, and may explain experience (and illness) in very different ways. Therapy is effective only if communication is; and in order to truly communicate, it is always important that these two participants understand the framework of assumptions and beliefs that the other is speaking from. In Morocco, where an incredible heterogeneity of beliefs characterizes not just society in general but most doctor-patient interactions as well, a difference in cultural background is often accompanied by a difference in language. Whereas the professional language of Moroccan psychiatry (and biomedicine) is French, the average patient who interprets his or her experiences as a form of spirit possession will not master this language, and will choose to explain said experiences in Moroccan Arabic – or in Tamazight, Tashelhit, or Tariffit.

Communication training manuals, or books about interviewing techniques, often emphasize the immense importance of understanding messages that are communicated nonverbally. The ‘indexical meaning’ of a message (Briggs, 1986) – facial expressions, gestures, tonal inflections, and so on – carry important clues about the ‘real’ meaning of whatever is expressed in words. But as much as it is true that we shouldn’t underestimate the necessity of heeding this more easily forgotten layer of communication, these Moroccan psychiatrists suggest that we should also not forget what’s right under our ears.

The same was suggested in a recent article that appeared on CNN. It reported on a study conducted by medical journal The Lancet, which found that online psychotherapy may be as effective as actual, in-person counseling. A group of patients was given a remote form of psychotherapy: they communicated with their therapist online, through instant messaging. In comparison with a control group that received no form of counseling, this indirect form of therapy seemed to have as high a success rate as ‘traditional’ therapy does. This would suggest either that nonverbal cues may not be so necessary in establishing a therapeutically effective level of communication between doctor and patient, or that online therapy has a particular advantage that might make up for that lack. A therapist interviewed for the interview suggests that the lack of nonverbal communication may in fact be liberating for the patient. Through this indirect form of interaction, stripped of any social context, an individual might be less worried about the social repercussions of things he or she wishes to say. In his words I read the suggestion that a solely linguistic form of interaction – in which social norms, contextual factors, and other cues that alter the meaning of spoken words, do not come into play – may provide the patient with a therapeutic sense of agency, of power. Agency and power so often hide in the ability to be heard, and for one’s words to be accepted. If nonverbal aspects of an interaction make a patient feel as though his words are not openly accepted, even if a psychiatrists words do their best to convey that feeling, perhaps a strictly verbal interaction does create more openness.

So what does all this imply about the nature of communication? What does it imply about the way in which we connect to one another, and by extension about the nature of our interpersonal relationships? How important is listening, exactly, and how do listening (to verbal communication) and observation (of nonverbal messages) relate to one another in the process of (effective) communication? And, perhaps above all, how does each form of communication affect the power relationship between the two speakers? These are questions I would really like to explore further in my research. I want to examine the role of language in Moroccan psychotherapy: I’m interested in the importance of words in creating a sense of understanding or shared meaning. I hope to explore psychiatrists’ and patients’ conception of the role of language in communicating, in understanding, and more fundamentally in structuring personal experience. Most of all, I’m interested in the power of language – the role that linguistic (mis)communication plays in structuring power relationships between psychiatrist and patient within this Moroccan context, in which ideologies and accompanying languages constantly vie for dominance. I will need to study Jacques Lacan, the French psychoanalyst who used Ferdinand de Saussure’s structuralist theories of language to explain psychic structures and processes, and who has had a major impact on French – and thus Moroccan – psychoanalysis.

And I’ll need a methodology that creates room for the subtleties and conflicts of language. I’ll be using the format of person-centered interviews – a lengthy, open-ended and very unstructured genre of interviewing that, like Moroccan psychiatrists, assumes the power of words. It’s a psychodynamically oriented kind of interviewing, in which the point is not only to learn something from the interviewee about the cultural phenomenon you’re studying, but also to learn something about how the interviewee personally reflects on that phenomenon; what role it plays in his experience. The interviewee is thus not only informant, but also respondent, and person-centered interviews require heavy analysis of the meanings that do not lie immediately at the surface of the interaction. But aside from looking for nonverbal clues to those meanings, the trick is also to look for linguistic ones. Person-centered interviews encourage the respondent to structure the direction and content of the discussion, and to reflect on her experiences in her own words. The trick is to analyze the respondent’s choice of language, his “personally organized statements – clumping of themes, slips of the tongue, obvious defensive maneuvers, evidence of emotion, fantasy, and speculative thinking” (Levy 1973:xxii). Why did the respondent discuss that issue at this particular moment? Why did he choose that particular word, and the connotations it carries, to express that experience? What does all that suggest about the respondent’s feelings about the matter?

It is thus crucial for anyone hoping to carry out person-centered interviews to learn the language of her respondents. There is no way you will pick up on the subtleties of certain linguistic choices if your level of competence in that language is merely conversational. I have a lot of work ahead of me in that regard. I’m beginning to establish a kind of feeling for the subtleties in French (even if I myself haven’t actively mastered them yet), but I have a long way to go for Moroccan Arabic. I’m considering this post a re-dedication to that endeavor. I’ve created a bit of structure in my work life, and hope that this will create some time for renewed language study. And perhaps I’ll find some time for that psychoanalytic reading, as well…

* the French discours is not the same as the english discourse

Empty

2009-08-31T11:56:00.001Z

The story of my Mobilia couch has ended not with a three-seater in my living room, but with my money back in my pocket.

Last Wednesday, I was at last expecting my couch to be delivered – and in the right color, this time. But, in an instance of total déjà vu, what I got instead was a repetition of that first episode, of waiting and vague promises. It started with a call from Mobilia themselves, informing me they’d be a day late with their delivery, and followed with three days of my having to call them to ask whether they were still going to come, and being reassured that the delivery would certainly take place – tomorrow if not today.

Me being incapable of getting verbally angry – let alone doing so in French or Arabic – Farid got involved and called the store. When, interspersed by a lot of hshouma alikoums, he told the salesman we’d come and get the couch ourselves, the truth came out: the couch was still in Casablanca and, once again, was the wrong color. Farid told him we’d come and collect my money the next day, and angrily hung up.

I did not get my money the next day. Farid and I arrived at the store and were met by a very apologetic salesman who, nevertheless, persisted in telling us he couldn’t give me my money, that I’d have to wait until Monday. Farid yelled at him in French and Arabic; and I, for the first time in my life, found some words of my own to yell. In a combination of French and English I asked him how the hell he had the nerve to ask me, yet again, to be patient. How he was going to compensate me for all the hours of work I’d missed, waiting for a delivery that never came. Why he thought it was somehow better or easier to have me go through that charade of supposed delivery for days at a time – twice – than to be honest and open with his customers about the status of their orders.

It is now Monday, I have just been to Mobilia to collect my money, and I am back at square one – with a modest sum of money, and no couch. On my way back to work I stopped by Kitea, the other budget furniture option, where the couches are slightly less attractive and slightly more expensive. I made a choice for their cheapest couch and got ready to place an order, only to hear that this model was no longer disponible, in any color.

There are other options – I can buy a pricy couch at the upscale furniture store in my neighborhood, or I can have something made to order (a process I will have to figure out, first). But I am sitting here, and for a moment I am letting it get to me. This little episode of frustration has added to a number of other work- and research-related developments that have left me feeling utterly suffocated, incapable, and powerless. And as a result, I’ve let it happen: I’ve given into unproductive wallowing in homesickness.

It’s not just the big things that I miss – the system, the structure, the familiarity, the natural ease of communication. It’s mostly the little things that keep popping up in my head. Like driving my car down University Avenue while listening to Weekend Players, or like walking across the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue with a Starbucks latte in my hand. Going running through the streets of North Park. Perusing books for hours at the Borders downtown. A glass of Chilean wine on my parents’ back porch. Warm brownies. The squirrels in Hyde Park. A smoked turkey sandwich. The New Yorker. A Chicago style pizza. Good sushi. DSW Shoe Warehouse. The number six bus. Real chocolate chip cookies. The beach in La Jolla. Lake Michigan and Chicago’s skyline. A huge glass of 2% milk. Barbeques on the point. Trader Joe’s. The Art Institute. A real Italian meal. Twiggs. The Living Room Café. H&M. Lake Shore Drive. Showtime. A hot dog. Banana Republic. HBO. Legitimate DVDs with movies in English. A good summer thunderstorm. The AMC at River East. MSNBC. Walgreen’s. NPR. The Sunday New York Times. And above all, my friends and family.

I’m going home for a week at the end of this month. Right now, it couldn’t come soon enough. And I just hope that that week of comfort will make a difference – that I’ll retrieve or recover a bit of the energy I long for.

Ramadan and Solidarity

2009-08-27T08:10:00.002Z

“wash kat‘ajebek lkousina lmaghribia?” Lalla Ghita asked me as we stood over a steaming pot of what would, in a few hours, become harira. ‘Do you like Moroccan cuisine?’

I nodded wholeheartedly, taking in the warm smell of cilantro emanating from the pot.

“I love it,” I responded.

“mmm,” she mumbled, and nodded in agreement.

“It’s great food,” she then added, “but it’s a lot of work.”

She was right. As we stood there waiting for the harira to come to a boil, we were no more than ninety minutes into what would become a five-hour marathon of preparations for that evening’s ftour.

I had joined lalla Ghita in her kitchen that afternoon in order to learn how to make harira. After an unsuccessful attempt of my own at making this soup, which resulted in a tasty stew that nevertheless tasted nothing like the intended goal, I decided it was time to get advice from a seasoned expert. Armed with pen and paper, I followed lalla Ghita around the kitchen as she explained her process from start to finish, and meticulously documented every step.

As I had expected (based on my experiences asking my former host family about their cooking), the recipes in lalla Ghita’s mind were not written in the language of measured quantities and numbered units of weight or volume. I attempted to use my own, admittedly limited, skills at eyeball-estimations as she showed and explained to me that harira calls for “chwiya dial l-hommous” (some chick peas), “chwiya dial l-qousbour” (a little cilantro), and “chwiya dial l-basla” (a little onion). But despite the vagueness of these instructions, I gradually began to discover a method to the seeming randomness. The secret lay in her inflections: as more ingredients were added to the big pot of soup, I realized that the number of i's in her “chwiya” were directly proportional to the quantity required.

“Chwiya dial l-matesha,” she explained as she cut up six big tomatoes, puréed them in a blender and poured the mixture into the pot.

She followed with “chwiiiya dial l-‘ades,” as she added about a handful of lentils to the soup.

And finally, she told me, it was optional to include “chwiiiiiiiiiiya dial l-safran” – and she sprinkled in a small pinch of saffron, for a nice yellow glow.

With the harira comfortably settled to stew on low heat, I observed and helped as lalla Ghita turned to other preparations. We made the filling for briouat – fried triangles of filo dough filled with meat and/or vegetables – and gutted and cleaned a chicken (“for tomorrow,” lalla Ghita explained; “it needs to soften up for a night first”). We made the dough for rghaif (flaky, square pancakes), and did multiple rounds of dishes. We cut thin sheets of filo dough into long strips, and folded the briouat filling into their characteristic triangle-shaped packages. We baked the rghaif, and boiled some eggs. We did more dishes, made coffee and mint tea, heated up milk, and fried the briouat. All the while, we chatted – about the NIMAR (for whose students lalla Ghita’s family occasionally provides lodging), about my purpose in Morocco, about lalla Ghita’s family, and (inevitably, perhaps) about food. I told her about my various attempts at Moroccan cooking, and she in turn explained to me what’s customarily eaten at Ramadan meals. In a show and tell of sorts, she extracted each item – tmar (dates), chebakia, sfouf, zoumita*– from refrigerator and cupboards, provided me with a rich description of its ingredients, and gave me various serving suggestions. A modest but well-deserved sense of pride spoke from her eyes as she told me this was the first year she herself had made some of these items from scratch.

Lalla Ghita occasionally sent her husband and son out on errands: she’d ask them to bring her some fresh mint, some cheese, or a loaf of bread. But other than these brief trips, lalla Ghita’s family mostly spent the afternoon reclining on the sdader (Moroccan sofas) in front of the television – watching Prison Break on MBC Action, or a Mexican soap opera dubbed in Darija on 2M – waiting for the hours to slip away. With the curtains drawn and their half-open eyes fixed passively on the television, they whiled away their afternoon in a state of utter torpor. I couldn’t help but wonder whose fast was easier: that of this slumbering family, who expended as little energy as possible, or that of their hardworking mother, for whom time must have passed by much more quickly.

Solidarity is an important concept during Ramadan – and many people I’ve talked with include this notion in their explanation of what Ramadan means. Apart from a way to turn back to God, Ramadan is also a way to boost a sense of community togetherness, a sense of shared experience and compassion for those around you. One thing this experience of fasting has taught me, is that this sense of solidarity is real and acute (more on that below). Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder how that sense of solidarity and shared experience correlates with this division of labor that had lalla Ghita single-handedly preparing several laborious dishes in a single afternoon, while her family slept on the couch. Is this division of labor seen as too much of a natural given to be the object of efforts at greater solidarity? Is the focus on solidarity more mental than anything else – is it less about action than it is about awareness? Did lalla Ghita’s husband perhaps consider his occasional errands to be an act of solidarity?

By seven PM, the table had been set, a platter of rghaif had been delivered as a gift to the neighbors, and we’d taken our seats around the knee-height table. A few minutes later, we turned down the sound of the television to listen for the cannon shot indicating sunset – our sign that we could gratefully grab that first glass of water. Lalla Ghita, the orchestrator of the meal, served everyone a bowl of harira and was herself last to sit down and break her fast.

And so the day ended with a rich and above all very satisfying ftour. A day of fasting seems to shrink my stomach, but exponentially increases my mental appetite. This leads to a bit of nightly frustration as my stomach protests at my eyes’ desire to keep feasting on the wealth of food. This evening was no different. One overly stuffed belly later, I said my goodbyes, promised to make lalla Ghita’s family a pot of harira in return for their hospitality, and headed home, utterly satisfied.

I think that what I enjoyed most about this experience wasn’t just the fact that the harira-mystery had finally been unveiled. Mostly, it felt deeply good to spend the afternoon inside a Moroccan household. I love having my own apartment, but sometimes I miss a sense of connectedness to ‘real’, daily Moroccan life – sometimes it feels as though I have permanently positioned myself on the outside of that actual lived reality, as though I’ve confined myself to expat life. I hope that this will change once my research gets under way and I interact with Moroccans again on a more regular basis, but that sense of disconnection saddens me sometimes.

And so I was grateful for this brief afternoon, in which I felt as though I had been let inside, and had been allowed to participate in the intimacy of Moroccan lived reality – allowed to share in the practice and concrete meaning of Ramadan customs. I have a feeling that my status as a participant in the fast may have helped to facilitate this inclusion. Because I, too, was sayma (fasting), the solidarity conferred by the shared experience of Ramadan seemed automatically to have been extended to me. For the first time in months, I did not feel like an inherent outsider. I felt as though I was recognized as being a part of something, even if just potentially – as though I had been let in. That afternoon, I felt as though those boundaries between me and Morocco – the ones that seem so insurmountable sometimes – might actually be crossable.

And for that alone, I’m happy I decided to participate in this experience. I had been told about the significance of solidarity during Ramadan – but I doubt I would have truly sensed its presence if I myself had not shared in the experience of fasting. Not only does my choice to fast entail that I have become a recipient of solidarity – that I have been allowed to experience what it is like to be part of an ‘inner circle’ in Morocco; it also entails that I’ve experienced first-hand what it is like to feel that sense of solidarity extend from myself to others. I’ve realized that it’s more than just an ideal that people express to me, the outsider, to teach me what Ramadan should be about. Fasting turns that sense of solidarity into a visceral and almost primal experience that cannot help but permeate your mind. The emptiness of my stomach is an inescapable and constant reminder of the fact that I am voluntarily sharing in a particular experience – and with every person I encounter during the day, I cannot help but think: does this person’s stomach feel the same way mine does?

Of course, not everyone feels the same amount of solidarity as others, and some more than others translate that visceral experience into action. But the sense of togetherness is there, much more acutely than I would have ever guessed, and being part of that has been an unforgettable experience.

* sfouf and zoumita are mixtures of ground nuts, spices, and various other ingredients; whereas sfouf is courser and stickier, zoumita is much more powdery. Both have a distinct taste of cinnamon, and remind me very much of pumpkin spices. Whereas sfouf is often pressed together into a mound and served as such, lalla Ghita mixed the zoumita with a combination of melted butter and honey. She rolled the resulting paste into small truffles, dipped them in sesame seeds, and arranged them on a plate.

Fasting and Feasting* - Two Days of Ramadan Briefly Sketched

2009-08-24T04:10:00.003Z

This past Friday morning, I went to Marjane for some grocery shopping. As I discovered when I walked onto the parking lot, about half of Rabat had decided to do the same. I had never seen that many cars stationed around the lot – nor had I ever dealt with such a lack of shopping carts. After a bit of scavenging around, I literally snagged the very last one there, and entered the store.

Inside, I met with mayhem. The aisles of Marjane had become a miniature version of Moroccan urban traffic. Thousands of carts, it seemed, were busy making their way through and across aisles, past roundabouts of sale items, without care or regard for any traffic rules. There was no right of way, no yielding, no merging; no system to the direction of traffic and no regulation of speed. Abandoned carts stood parked at random, no rhyme or reason to their positioning. Pedestrians darted this way and that, weaving themselves in between moving carts. Idle cart-pushers strolled along at a leisurely pace, suddenly abandoning their cart mid-traffic to browse an item two feet up ahead – to the great frustration of all speed-devils behind them, trying to get to the tomatoes before they ran out. Maneuvering my own cart through this chaos and barely managing to avoid a few multi-cart pileups, I slightly began to re-think my desire to learn to drive a stick shift and navigate actual Moroccan traffic on my own…

All these people had come to Marjane to stock up on Ramadan-necessities: their carts were full to the brim and beyond with industrial size containers of oil, flour, dates, and sugar. Not only are excess quantities of these staples needed to fashion the copious amounts of Ramadan-delicacies that are expected by hungry fasters at each day’s sundown; but in the interest of avoiding unnecessary labor during long, hot days without food or water, people try to get their major shopping in before the start of this month. The exact start date of Ramadan had not yet been determined, but it was to be either Saturday or Sunday – and people apparently wished to be prepared for all contingencies.

I too was there to stock up on Ramadan necessities: mostly high-fiber items that I hoped would tie me over during those long days of fasting. I decided to participate in this month of fasting - because after all, I figured, as an anthropologist I am a participant-observer. I think that the only way to truly approach some kind of understanding of what this month means to Moroccans, is to engage as fully as possible in the practices and traditions.

And so I find myself, at my time of writing, counting down the last hour until I hear the cannon shot and the muezzin’s call for Maghreb (sunset) prayer – our indication that we are allowed to eat – on my second day of fasting. I am sitting by my open balcony doors, and I can already smell the harira (a Moroccan soup of chick peas, lentils, and tomatoes) being made in kitchens up and down my street. The street is quieting down; anyone still outside is there for some last minute grocery shopping and is rushing home, plastic bags in hand. In about forty-five minutes, the street will be entirely deserted, as everyone retreats to the dinner table at home, ready to pounce as soon as prayers are over.

In standard Arabic, the sunset meal is called iftar; in Morocco it’s referred to as ftour,** the same word used to denote ‘breakfast’ any other time of year. It traditionally consists of dates, chebakia (very sweet, very sticky pretzel-shaped things), harira, bread, hard-boiled eggs, milk, and a variety of other things that may vary from table to table. Ftour is a meal to eat in the company of loved ones, of course, but for those whose family ties extend beyond the city limits, restaurants put a prix-fixe ftour on their menu during Ramadan. And so it happened that yesterday, I joined Farid to break my first day of fasting at a local restaurant, where we were served a luxurious ftour for 30 dirhams. I do not think I have ever appreciated food and drink as much as I did at that moment – I remember being hyper conscious and appreciative of the taste and texture of every item on my plate: the stickiness of the dates, the sweetness of the chebakia, the softness of the bread. My stomach was filled to capacity way before my mind was done relishing the cornucopia in front of me.

Nevertheless, spending a day without food or water was less difficult than I had feared. I felt listless, my muscles seemed to have no strength, and I very consciously felt a tugging emptiness in my stomach, but I was able to hold out, and I was still able to concentrate on my work. Day two was easier than day one, and I hope day three will be easier than day two. But for now, I’m looking forward to that intense feeling of appreciation for the food I will be eating in an hour – that ultimate satisfaction of filling an entirely empty stomach. Tonight Farid joins me at my house, where we will be making instant harira from a box – I intend to make my own at some point, too, but have not yet found the time.

While we eat, we will be watching 2M, one of Morocco’s public television channels. Whereas everyone watches satellite channels from Dubai during the year, Ramadan is a time for a bit of national pride and identity. 2M will let us know when we’re allowed to eat, and will subsequently intersperse the broadcast of a new sitcom with lavish, special Ramadan-oriented commercials for food (I’m getting the sense that this month of fasting is in fact all about eating).

After dinner, we will head out for a stroll through town. Whereas the streets are deserted between sunrise and sundown – everyone avoiding the sun, and unnecessary expenditure of energy – the city comes to life again about an hour after ftour. At 8 pm, the streets are as empty as one will normally only experience long after midnight, but an hour later, stores and cafés re-open and everyone comes out in their finest clothing to see and be seen. We’ll have some coffee at a café, and then we’ll each head home. I’ll eat a small bite and then go to bed, only to wake up again at 4 am for a last light snack before the muezzin and another cannon shot lets everyone know the sun has risen.

And my third day of fasting will begin.

* I’ve stolen this title from the English version of Marjo Buitelaar’s book about Ramadan.
** ftour comes from iftar, I’m pretty sure

The Moudawana, Five Years Later

2009-08-20T10:34:00.005+01:00

The New York Times published an article today about the status of women in Morocco, five years after the radical reforms of the Moudawana (the Family Code of Law) came into effect. This article is the latest in a small collection of others published about the same issue, and largely presents the same conclusion: while great headway has been made toward elevating the status of women in Morocco, much remains to be desired.

The articles’ authors note a discrepancy between imposed law and applied reality, and mention that the legal changes made are not far-reaching enough: women still inherit only half of what men do, for instance, and single mothers still have no legal rights. More reforms are needed, they therefore argue.

As much as it is true that the new body of Family laws leaves certain issues unchanged, I agree with those who think that the disparity between the law and its real-life application is a more pressing issue that needs to be dealt with, before we start talking about further reforms. Five years after the new laws came into effect, issues continue to plague their mise en pratique. Because the new code of law was not accompanied by sufficient efforts to re-train Morocco’s legislative body, judges and courts were mostly left to figure out how to apply the new procedures on their own. Divorce procedures, marriage contracts, applications for citizenship, and custody battles therefore continue to be plagued by legal inconsistency and uncertainty.*

Likewise, efforts to educate the public remained insufficient. Of course, the means to create awareness are limited, among a public with a high rate of illiteracy. But the result is that many – both men and women – have little sense of what the new laws really entail. And in that sense, the failure of the Moudawana to unambiguously live up to its promise of radical change points to deeper issues that plague Moroccan society.

First of all, the insufficient efforts at public education reveal (and probably reinforce) another dimension of the big divide between center and margin in Morocco. The new law was passed by the parliament in Rabat. Its written form, as well as those publications that discuss it, are accessible to and read by the educated citizens of Morocco’s larger cities. Francophone women’s magazines make an effort to answer readers’ questions about what has legally changed. But very little of it all penetrates the margins – by which I mean both those geographical areas far removed from the epicenter of government, as well as those communities far removed from any sense of power, through lack of money and lack of education. The result? Those women who stand to gain the most from these new laws – impoverished, uneducated, illiterate women in rural regions – are the least aware of their new rights, and continue their lives much as they used to. And how can you effect real, applied, change, when it impacts only a small proportion of the population? There is very little point in enforcing change from the top, if it is not accompanied by an effort to reach down toward the public, to help it understand the new legislation and facilitate its real-life implementation.

(This cartoon appeared in TelQuel, the francophone Moroccan version of Time or Newsweek. The dialogue translates into "Informing myself about the Moudawana reform? That's a bad idea, I might no longer be against it!")

In a more general sense, I think that the lack of education and awareness also makes that the general public (urban as well as rural) does not know what to make or think of the reformed Moudawana. With only a vague sense of what the new laws really stipulate, many see the new code mostly as a dangerous threat to traditional values and social order.** Originally pushed for by feminist movements and other liberal progressive groups, the new laws are seen as representing the victory of modernizing and secularizing tendencies in Morocco. The entire issue of Family Code reform thereby remains stuck in (and representative of) the deadlocked debate-turned-struggle between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, and inspires fear and hostility in those who perceive it as a threat to their conservatism.

The new Moudawana is both cause and result of a shift in the foundations of Moroccan society. Government efforts at socio-economic development, modernization, and globalization have occasioned an intensive and sometimes highly emotional debate about the relative value of tradition and modernity. Within that debate, these two concepts, or better said, ideologies, are often starkly opposed to one another. Each has its adherents, and each of these two camps is so worried about the dire impact of the other’s dominance, that neither is prepared to make any compromises on its ideals. The result is a deadlocked debate in which ‘tradition’ is portrayed as the polar opposite of ‘modernity’, and open communication seems to get a bit lost. As much as the King attempted to involve representatives of all ideologies and sympathies in the drafting of a new law, the reforms of the Moudawana are mostly seen as the triumph of modernity and secularism – and many conservatives and Islamists felt (and feel) disenfranchised, overruled, or ignored.

As much as, again, I agree that additional changes must be made, I also think that radical reform simply may not always be the most effective way to push for change. Not if it creates hostility and thus throws up barriers that hinder effective communication and collaboration. People don’t like change, even if it’s inevitable. Sometimes, it is much more efficient to be patient, take it slow, make an effort not to completely do away with the past, and ease into a new status quo. It makes those resistant to change feel validated in their concerns. Pushing too hard, too fast, only incites greater conflict and protest.

Yes, there is a ways yet to go toward equalizing women’s status. But right now, I think that what is holding it back has less to do with legal rights than it does with public opinion. Radical legal reform is not necessarily effective if it gets too far ahead of the public mind.*** There is no point in adding new laws to ensure women’s equal share of inheritance, if women in rural areas have not even become able to claim their right to divorce. This does not mean that we should give up on change. But it does mean a greater openness to conservatives’ sentiments, individuals’ fears, a greater effort to find a middle ground between different ideological desires, attempts to ease into change at a pace that is comfortable for everyone – and a willingness to make other social changes that make the implementation of new family laws a bit easier (combating illiteracy and corruption, perhaps?). An effort, simply, not to make a large proportion of society feel disenfranchised and brushed aside. Do this, and perhaps you’ll find much more goodwill and openness to real, meaningful dialogue about the future of society and the place of women in it.

In order for this dialogue to take place, greater openness is needed, as well as a greater and more systemic effort at public education about what these new laws really imply: how they relate to Islam (how they may coexist peacefully with religious values), what their impact will be on the structure of the family, and how it affects the status of men. Fears and concerns must be openly and respectfully addressed. Only then can the population begin to process the changes that have been made – and only once that has been done, is it going to be useful to begin discussing additional reforms.

* add to that the persistent and widespread problem of corruption…
** Yes, of course, the new Moudawana does make a lot of changes to the traditional status quo. But I think that there may be more room for a continuation of traditional values within the new legal situation than many people assume.
*** I do not think this is always true, in every situation. There are times and places when radical reform is necessary. But within the context of a deadlocked societal debate between two camps with equal power, it simply doesn’t serve anyone to make half the population feel disenfranchised. No matter how wrong you may think that other half is.

Cucumbers

2009-08-17T09:59:00.001+01:00

For all of July and August, Morocco is suspended in a state of slumber. All but its most essential physiological functions have been frozen for the summer months. Parliament is on summer recess, and universities have been deserted. Libraries, institutions, and foundations have closed their doors; magazines have stopped their presses (tying us over to September with a single summer-issue), and even some stores and restaurants have boarded up their premises for a few weeks. The streets of Rabat are empty: because no one is actually from here, the city’s population spends its vacation elsewhere.

In Holland, this is called ‘komkommertijd’ – cucumber time. It is a period when the going is so slow, and so little happens, that there is nothing more interesting to discuss than this summer vegetable, itself devoid of much substance. All big decisions are suspended until fall, newspapers publish stories of petty theft, rescued dogs, small acts of charity – items that would never make the news at any other time of year – and people spend their evenings at outdoor cafés, cooling down over refreshing drinks and easy banter. I’ve always liked the word and the imagery it conjures up – though it doesn’t quite seem to grasp the essence of a Moroccan summer. The lack of substance is certainly there, but whereas cucumbers connote something juicy and refreshing, the summer months here don’t quite answer to that image…

At the NIMAR, too, we’re working at half-capacity. There are only three of us who haven’t taken the month of August off, and we work with muted strength amidst painters and cleaners busy renovating the institute.* Apart from some interviewing activity, I myself have little more than cucumbers to write about. I spend my workdays browsing online academic journals in search of literature to assign the students that we’ll be hosting here this fall. Other than that I’ve been lazily reading books, watching the occasional movie, going for runs, cooling down with refreshing cold showers… and waiting for my couch to arrive.

It was July 21st that I went to Mobilia (a Moroccan version of Ikea, if you will) and placed an order for this couch. I had wanted something small and simple: no patterned fabrics, no frills – something the average selection of Moroccan furniture seems to have difficulty meeting, sometimes. I was so excited when I found a picture of a sofa that corresponded to my wishes on the Mobilia website, that a visit to their store in Agdal was one of the first actions I took after receiving my grant money. I was helped by a friendly staff member who took my order, money, and contact information, and presented me in return with a receipt of purchase, along with an estimate for the delivery date: August 5th.

On August fourth, I received a call. The couch had only just been delivered to the depot in Casablanca, it was reported. The delivery to my apartment would have to be delayed for a few days. Was Saturday alright? Of course, I answered, mashi mushkil (no problem). I could wait another few days.

When, by Saturday afternoon, the couch still had not arrived, I myself placed a call to the store to inquire about my couch. The staff member – the same who had sold me the couch – seemed surprised. It still hadn’t arrived? That’s too bad, he lamented. He couldn’t imagine what could have happened, I was on the schedule for the day. However, deliveries were actually done for the day, so the couch would now be delivered on Monday.

Monday came and went with no more than a repeat of the same conversation I had on Saturday. The staff member now told me that the delivery people had stopped by my house and called my phone, but no one had answered. I responded that my phone reported no missed calls, and the staff member apologized once again, with the promise that my couch would, for sure, be delivered on Tuesday. I was getting frustrated. I hadn’t worried, up until this moment – all other deliveries (my fridge, my dining room table, the small side tables that I had made) had gone so smoothly that I had had faith in this delivery, too. But I found it increasingly hard to believe that I’d ever have a couch.

I took pre-emptive action on Tuesday, and called ahead in the morning to ask for a time-estimate. Told to be home at one PM, I hung around in my living room, waiting for the doorbell to ring. When, by two, I still had no couch, I called again – and was now told the couch would be there at 3.30. A few phone calls and hours (but no couch) later, I called once more and asked for an explanation. The staff member had no idea what might have happened. The delivery men should have dropped off the sofa, he said. He apologized profusely for my lack of couch, and promised he’d come and deliver the item in person, tomorrow at one.

On Wednesday afternoon, he did actually come in person, as promised – but sans couch. Highly apologetically, he explained that by some gross oversight, the couch delivered to the depot in Casablanca was the wrong color. Instead of the white I had ordered, this sofa was bright red. He was so sorry, he kept repeating; he had no idea what may have gone wrong. It clearly said ‘white’ on the order form, he lamented while showing me his copy, a finger underlining the word in question. It was going to take another ten days to order a new couch, he then anxiously announced; there was no other way.

I sighed, and couldn’t help but laugh a little. The story had become too farcical to still be frustrating, and I felt sorry for this apologetic man. “Ten days?” I declared; “mashi mushkil…”

* Despite the state of suspended animation in which the country’s public sphere finds itself, there is some buzzing activity of preparation for the coming year. Aside from the NIMAR, multiple other projects of renovation and construction seem to be going on around town.

Making Headway...

2009-08-13T10:14:00.000+01:00

For all the frustration at the state of paralysis from which my research seemed to suffer in the past months, it has been unexpectedly easy to jump-start my project.

After deciding to pursue interviews with mental healthcare practitioners around town, I spent a day collecting names, phone numbers, and email addresses. I made myself an Excel spreadsheet, then bit the bullet and started making phone calls.

Of the five psychiatrists I called over the course of an hour, two actually picked up the phone, and both agreed to a meeting. These meetings, both very brief, each produced an hour-long follow-up appointment for an interview. One takes place tonight, and one next week.

These two scheduled entretiens are an addition to the interview I conducted last night, with the prominent psychoanalyst I met with two weeks ago. I have thus gone from nothing to three interviews within the course of a week, and in the process have proven to myself that all of this, this research, may actually be doable.

What I have noticed so far, over the course of my brief meetings with three different psychiatrists, is the diversity that characterizes psychiatric practice(s) here in Rabat – and this alone proves that pursuing these interviews was a good idea; that limiting myself to the psychiatric practice of the Clinic would have produced a skewed, one-sided picture of reality. Every time I mentioned to the psychiatrist I was meeting with that I was interested in interviewing them as a way of broadening my understanding of psychiatric practice in Morocco, I received an instant nod in agreement. Good idea, they’d say: there’s such a variety in approaches and philosophies here, that it’s important to expand your scope. Interestingly, they all characterized practice at the Clinic as ‘Americanized’: as very ‘biomedical’ in its approach. Despite the fact that they all seemed to strongly approve my choice to conduct research there, I got the sense that this characterization was not necessarily positive; the tone implied limitation. It makes me curious to know more about how these independently practicing psychiatrists characterize their own brand of mental healthcare (and whether they will associate this with a particular region of the world, as well).

In general, I’m curious to know how this emphasized variation in practices will be reflected in the interview data I gather over the course of my conversations with these psychiatrists. But a curious diversity that has struck me so far, in visiting these three practices, is a considerable variation in the material wealth expressed by the office décor. Whereas the prominent psychoanalyst with the downtown office is housed in bright, breezy, sleek and chic quarters, the doctor I spoke with yesterday, for instance, sees patients in an old, dilapidated apartment building in my own neighborhood. His walls are bare; his furniture is old, plastic, and mismatched. Despite French doors that open out to a balcony, the air was hot and stuffy. I wonder what this variation is suggestive of. I see it as a reflection, if anything, of psychiatry’s under-funding by the state. This kind of variation in wealth is possible, I think, only because these psychiatrists receive nothing from the government, and are dependent on their own wealth and income. Is the state of their office then a measure of their success as a psychiatrist? Or, if (as the prominent downtown psychoanalyst suggests) psychiatrists receive patients from all walks of life and charge them on a sliding scale according to means, is it indicative of the kinds of patients they receive?

What all three practitioners had in common, though, was a great friendliness and hospitality toward me. My initial meetings with them were brief, but all expressed an interest in reading my proposal, and agreed to schedule more time for an actual interview. If this is characteristic of all mental healthcare professionals in Rabat, doors may be flying open a lot more easily than I had anticipated…

Last night, then, I conducted my actual first real interview, with the prominent downtown psychoanalyst. We met in his psychoanalytic office, a room I hadn’t seen before. The two meetings I had had with him had been conducted in his ‘office’ – a white-and-gray room dominated by a huge desk. He had sat on one end and I had sat on the other, and it had made me wonder how he was able to conduct psychoanalysis there. This question only deepened as I visited the other practices, which – despite simpler décor – did feature actual Freudian divans. I had just begun to wonder if, perhaps, the prominent psychoanalyst’s practice was larger than I had initially thought when, indeed, I was ushered through a door I hadn’t noticed before and let into a large but intimate room, featuring the requisite psychoanalytic couch.

I didn’t come close to finishing the list of questions I had brought with me, but obtained a wealth of information (that I will process and perhaps write about here, once I have listened to the recording again). As I had noticed during our first meeting, prominent downtown psychoanalyst likes to talk. He is, and very much sees himself as, a pioneer and rare expert on the practice of psychoanalysis in Morocco. He has distinct theories about how cultural specificities relate to universal psychic processes, writes countless books about issues in ‘cross-cultural psychology’, and took a lot of my questions as diving boards into a presentation of his arguments on this topic. After the interview, I noted down in my field notes that he had been in an explanatory or demonstrative mood, rather than a reflective one. He had an agenda in speaking with me, he wanted to convey a message to me. I wonder if he will ever make the transition to more reflectiveness if I continue to speak with him – but whichever state he was in, I learned a lot. I asked more questions this time around, directed the conversation a bit more, but also left him to take my questions in whatever direction his free association took him; I wanted to know what my questions made him think of.

I’m still curious to see him psychoanalyze someone. As someone so eager to talk, I have a difficult time imagining him as a quiet listener. Seeing him in his actual psychoanalytic office last night made the image a bit more tangible, but even there, and despite his immediate framing of this meeting as my turn to direct the conversation (“je vous écoute”, he told me as soon as we sat down), he was the dominant conversation partner.

I left the psychoanalyst’s office on an absolute high, last night. I felt as though I had crossed a crucial hurdle. I had taken the first step, and it would all be easier from that point on. Nevertheless, I’m nervous for my second interview, tonight at 6. In theory I am excited about the process, about these new opportunities, about the fact that I am finally engaging in actual researcher-activities. But emotionally, I’m not quite caught up with that excitement yet. I still feel nerves. I still tend to look up at the precipice of the mountain that is my research and, realizing I am still at the bottom, feel a bit of vertigo.

I’m guessing it will take a bit of time to get over the initial nerves and gain a bit of confidence in my abilities as a researcher, and as a French-speaker. But I’ll get the hang of it. The important thing to focus on is that I’ve (finally) gotten started. And that, despite the daunting presence of the mountain ahead of me, I’m putting one foot in front of the other and making slow progress…

Ramadan Preamble

2009-08-10T21:26:00.003+01:00

Depending on when exactly the next new moon will be spotted, Ramadan starts in about ten days.

In lieu of that moon sighting, there have been other signs that the holy month of fasting is approaching. Medina streets have been crowded with carts that sell soup tureens and ladles: the ones typically used for harira, the Moroccan tomato-and-chickpea soup that figures so importantly in the cultural experience of Ramadan. Shoppers at Marjane are stocking up on industrial size containers of sugar, flour, oil, and other necessities for the various traditional delicacies that people feast on after sundown. Those who drink alcohol have started their 40-day period of pre-Ramadan abstinence (the ‘theory’ being that alcohol takes 40 days to leave your system*). Meanwhile, the alcohol supply at Rbati grocery stores is (literally) drying up; no alcohol will be for sale anywhere during Ramadan, and shops are selling out the last of their supply. And finally, the August-issues of various women’s magazines discuss the ins and outs of a Ramadan that falls in the summer months: articles advise readers on how to schedule their summer holidays so as to avoid having to fast while on vacation, discuss the best strategies for fasting for long hours, and offer suggestions for daily activity that won’t wear you out.

When I arrived in Morocco at the tail end of Ramadan 2008, I discussed my observations of its practice with my Arabic teacher, Ilyas. I was intrigued by the cultural and societal importance this religious requirement seemed to bear, and was excited to be able to witness its final days. The experience (and my discussions of it with Ilyas) served only to heighten my interest in the significance of Ramadan, and so I am excited that I’ll have the opportunity to participate in the entire holy month this year, and take a deeper look at its meaning, its importance, and its practice.

The commandment to fast during the month of Ramadan can be found in the Qur’an, in a Surah (chapter) revealed in the time after the Prophet Mohammed had established a community of believers in the town of Medina.** On the basis of these verses, the point of this religious obligation seems primarily to be remembrance of the revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Mohammed – which occurred during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. If you see that moment of revelation as a kind of origin-point for the definition, or documentation, of Islamic theology,*** this suggests that the fast of Ramadan thereby serves as a kind of renewal of one’s religious allegiance and identity. This is indeed how the purpose of Ramadan is often described in literature on the subject. Ramadan is meant to be a time of reflection on the basic principles of the Islamic worldview; a renewal of one’s awareness of, commitment to, and effort to enact, its values and moral compass.

About fifteen years ago, Dutch anthropologist Marjo Buitelaar wrote an ethnography of Ramadan in Morocco (Ramadan: Sultan van Alle Maanden, 1993). Describing women’s rituals of preparation and practice, she analyzed the way in which her informants enacted and reflected on this religious obligation. Buitelaar argues that Ramadan’s importance in lived Islam derives from its connection to three other important Islamic concepts: the ummah, or religious community (which is united in the shared fulfillment of the fast); tahara, which refers to purity and cleanliness (the fast is often touted as a great way to cleanse one’s body and soul from the inside out); and ajr, which might be described as a religious version of earned ‘points’, credits, or air-miles (you earn ajr not only by fasting, but also by making an effort to carry out other good deeds during this holy month, such as charity). What I liked most about her ethnography, though, was a smaller point she makes in the course of her argument. Buitelaar suggests that Ramadan also has much to do with another, even more fundamental, Islamic concept: tawhid.

Tawhid, in its most direct translation, means something like ‘one-ness’. It refers in the first place to the absolute monotheism that lies at the foundation of the Islamic worldview, but it resonates with other elements of theology. An important difference between Islam and Christianity, for instance, is the fact that Islam does not ascribe to the same division between body and soul that characterizes Christianity. There is no notion of struggle between a sinful body and a redeemable soul in Islam, and there is thus also no notion of original sin.**** Islam sees the individual as a single whole, body and soul united. Further, tawhid can be taken as a reference to the importance of a religious community – to the unification of people by collective worship and community solidarity.

Ramadan, as a religious obligation, could perhaps be understood as a reinforcement of tawhid in all dimensions of its meaning. The act of fasting unites body and soul in dedication to God. The renewal of religious awareness that Ramadan is meant to occasion is elicited not simply by a mental dedication, but by the use of the body in forcing the mind to turn back to God. It is a very physical kind of devotion. In addition, Ramadan is as much about renewing one’s individual devotion to God, as it is about reinforcing communal solidarity. Ramadan realigns an individual’s goals with God’s commands, but also with the interests of his or her community: it is meant to reunite people under a single shared purpose and renewed spirit of consideration and mutual care-taking. Fasting is meant to enforce awareness not only of God, but also of those among one’s community who deal with hardship on a daily basis.

It was mostly this latter aspect of Ramadan that intrigued me last year. Ramadan is an individual religious obligation, but simultaneously an experience that highlights the importance of the community. What I notice in all this coverage of Ramadan in women’s magazines, though, is a lacking of this communal focus. In fact, the approach taken to Ramadan seems to be highly individualistic. For instance, discussions about the purpose or benefits of Ramadan focus almost solely on its physiological effects on the body – highlighting that same sense of purification and cleansing that Buitelaar wrote about in her ethnography. Its religious meaning and encouragement of community solidarity are left undiscussed. There are articles that decry the excesses in which many people indulge during Ramadan – but rather than argue that overindulging in sugary richness after sundown contradicts both the physiological and mental purpose of fasting, the author denounces the unfair burden that the expectation of a full-on feast at every sundown places on women, who (while men are allowed to spend their days playing around at the beach) have no choice but to slave away their days in the kitchen.

Probably the larger purpose and meaning of it all is considered to be obvious, no longer worthy of discussion, because everyone is aware. Still, the fact remains that there seems to be an interesting push-and-pull between individualism and communalism that is probably always present, but comes out with particular force during Ramadan. I wrote about this tension last year, and I’m hoping to explore it more this time around, perhaps to get to the bottom of how these two forces relate to one another, and what it means for the experience of this holy month. This means that the topic of Ramadan will probably make a few repeat appearances here on this blog. Please stay tuned…

* This is not a proscription you will find in any Islamic Scripture, considering the fact that alcohol is always haram, forbidden, as a matter of principle. The theory is more of a cultural practice than a religious law.
** This is Surah number two, verses 183-187. It is a Surah that dates from after the hijra – after the Prophet’s historic emigration from Mecca to Medina, where he had been invited to build a community of followers in peace. As a later set of revelations that date from a period when persecution had mostly passed, these Surahs focus more strongly than the preceding ones on defining community identity and circumscribing daily religious practice.
*** This is a tricky point, though: within the Islamic worldview, the moment at which the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammed is not the beginning, or founding of Islam, since this is the original religion practiced by Abraham. The Qur’an is, however, the latest and final putting-into-words-and-laws of this religion.
**** Adam and Eve are featured in the Qur’an, but punishment for their disobedience is meted out only to them; not to the rest of humanity.

"Number One"

2009-08-06T08:36:00.005+01:00

Last fall, a new Moroccan movie was released that, according to Femmes du Maroc at least, had everyone talking. The magazine itself devoted a lengthy article to this new film, “Number One” (this is not a translation; I’d transcribe its Arabic title as ‘Namber Ouane’), most of it a rave review.

As a movie about the consequences of the new Moudawana (the new Family Code of Law*) for the relationship between men and women, my interest was piqued. I waited and waited for the movie to come to theaters in Rabat – but I was out of luck. Time passed, and the day of my departure to the United States finally arrived before the movie did. Back at home, I crossed my fingers for six weeks in the hopes that Number One would still be showing at the Rbati theaters when I returned. Of course, as luck would have it, by the time I arrived back in Morocco, the movie had come and gone, and I had missed my opportunity…

Then, last weekend, a wonderful turn of luck handed me a DVD copy of the film, and I finally saw for myself what Femmes du Maroc had raved about. And it was everything I was expecting.

“Number One” is a propaganda film, first and foremost. Its message lies right on the surface, conveniently etched out in stark colors and so concrete that you’ll be sure to get the idea even if you sleep through most of the movie. It is a neon-advertisement-version of Moroccan reality, the before-and-after of an infomercial.

The movie tells the story of a middle-aged, middle-class man stuck in the middle of a power hierarchy. Feeling put down psychologically by his wealthy boss, he is a despot to the people he considers below him on the scale: his wife and his employees – seamstresses at the clothing factory where he is a manager. The story takes off when, literally overnight, he changes his ways. He becomes friendly, gentle, and respectful – and finds that not only the women around him, but also he himself is much happier this way.

“Number One” is funny, it made me laugh – but it is mostly the way in which this story is told that makes this movie endlessly fascinating to me. First of all, there is the fact that although the movie clearly tells the story of the changing relationship between men and women, it suggests that the societal confusion surrounding the moudawana has led to a bouleversement (I love that word), or complete upheaval, of hierarchies in general. The film is full of references to and illustrations of other power inequalities. The main character, Aziz, is a tyrant not only to his female employees, but also to the male parking guard who works for him, or the young man selling nuts on the street. Moreover, it seems that Aziz acts the way he does out of a frustration that stems from the fact that he himself is stuck at the low end of yet another hierarchical relationship – that with his boss, who spends his days barking orders over the phone at a suddenly very humble Aziz.

Aziz’ overnight change comes with a radical upheaval of the power relationships in which he is involved. We see that he becomes more friendly to his wife and more understanding to his employees, but at no point does this shift in hierarchies become more clear than at the moment that Aziz, in a first attempt to reverse this new situation, visits a fqih.

Technically, originally, or officially, a fqih is simply a man learned in the Qur’an who can guide others in matters of theology and religious practice. In practice, there are many fqihs who have become much more than that; they have added an expertise in magic to their repertoire, and may more aptly be considered a kind of ‘sorcerer’. Fqihs are always men, and it is important to know that these sorcerer-fqihs are usually quite marginal figures. Sorcery lies very much beyond all that is considered Islamically orthodox, and it is thus not something that is commonly accepted in Morocco. Those who choose to devote themselves to this practice thus often find themselves on the social, economic, and political outskirts of society.

The fqih in this movie is no different. He resides in a shack in the “bidonville des voleurs,” the slum of thieves. Aziz enters the neighborhood in his nice suit and briefcase; an appearance that inspires fear in his employees, but scorn and mocking among the slum’s residents. To make matters worse, he must admit to a shady figure on the street that he, the important factory manager, is seeking help from the fqih, a resident of this slum (and from the shady figure himself, because Aziz is quite unable to find the fqih on his own). “Ma kathshemsh,” the figure breezily tells Aziz as he leads him down a winding alley, ‘don’t be ashamed’: members of parliament, governors, even ministers come to consult the mighty fqih.

Ultimately, though, even this almighty fqih (who himself spares no words in expressing his unprecedented and unsurpassed power) admits to be completely powerless in the face of the force that has brought about this change in Aziz’ comportment. And that brings me to two other fascinating elements of this story: the allusion that there is a mighty female power that can ultimately overrule even the most tyrannical man, and the form this power takes – a chouafa.

A chouafa (pronounced shoe-waah-fah) is a kind of medium. She is always female, and in many ways the counterpart of the sorcerer-fqih. As someone who communicates with spirits and other supernatural forces, a chouafa can be consulted to divine what has caused the problems in your life, and will offer solutions that range from magic spells and curses to herbal concoctions and ritual sacrifices. Much like the supernatural figure of Aicha Qandisha, a chouafa represents the danger and mystery of female power. Chouafat are thus often considered a threat to the normal social order and, like the sorcerer-fqihs, find themselves on the margins of society.

Nevertheless, this marginality prevents neither Aziz’ wife from seeking a chouafa’s help in enchanting her husband, nor Aziz himself in seeking a fqih’s supernatural remedy. It illustrates the ambiguity of power that affects the Moroccan social order (and all other social orders alike, probably) – our dependence on great power, and our simultaneous fear of its destructive force.** This is an ambiguity that the movie tries to provide a new solution to, I think. Aziz’ story is meant to suggest that rather than fear such power we’d be better off to accept it – in the end, we’re all subject to female power, whether or not we respect women – but also that this power is much easier to exercise and maintain when it is accompanied by some respect for those at whom it is directed.

The last element that fascinated me about this movie is the fact that Aziz immediately interpreted his change of behavior as an illness or affliction. Of course, in the movie, it was – an affliction directly caused by a chouafa’s herbal concoction, mixed into Aziz’ evening meal. But the point is that Aziz, not knowing how he’d contracted the problem, immediately sought the help first of a fqih, and then of a psychiatrist. He immediately pathologized his anomalous behavior, his deviance from the social norm. More specifically, he pathologized what he seemed to consider a loss of masculinity: nervously, he faced the doctor and uttered his fear: “have I become a homosexual?” The doctor laughs and shakes his head, to Aziz’ great relief. They settle on another, less noxious diagnosis: “syndrome de la moudawana.”

What really struck me was the movie plot’s similarity to what Vincent Crapanzano argued, years ago, in his “ethnopsychiatric” ethnography of a mystical brotherhood in Meknes (The Hamadsha, 1973). When you are truly possessed by a jinn, Crapanzano explains, complete exorcism is no longer a possibility. The jinn is with you for life, and so the best you can do is to establish a symbiotic relationship with it, thus reaping the benefits of a connection with the supernatural. Though marginalized by mainstream society because of the erratic behavior the jinn causes you to exhibit, the therapeutic process of communicating with the jinn – facilitated by this brotherhood of men who have themselves been possessed – is simultaneously an induction into a new community, of those with a certain kind of supernatural power.

The exact same thing happens to Aziz. He is ‘possessed’ by respect for women (literally – the chouafa’s magic has taken possession of him by ingestion), and learns from the fqih and psychiatrist that there is no way he can be completely exorcised. He ultimately finds that he can reclaim a sense of power and status not by ridding himself of his new behavior, but by embracing his new reality. He may have lost the respect of a few friends, but he has gained that of a new social group.

Modernity, tradition; power, danger; male, female; healthy, pathological – if there’s anything this movie shows, it’s that these binary sets are inextricably related, and a shift in one balance tips that of the others…

* the family code is a body of law that governs all relationships and acts that pertain to the family – such as marriage, divorce, and heritage. Previously based on Islamic law, the moudawana was radically reformed in 2003, and is now based on civil law. Most of the changes to the family code come down to an unprecedented increase in women’s rights.
** It never stops to intrigue me that our preoccupation with power – something that is probably very primal in our nature – is so often projected onto our experiences of the relationship between genders. Though most likely, this is also perfectly natural, given the fact that that relationship is one of the most central and important in our collective lives as human beings.

On Otherness

2009-08-03T08:58:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago, as we discussed a recent blog post I had written, my mother mentioned that some of my pieces seem to suggest a great preoccupation with my conspicuous otherness here in Rabat. Why did I focus on my foreignness so much, she wondered?

I did not have an immediate answer to that question. She was right, but why was I so preoccupied with my own foreignness? What was this sense of Otherness, and what brought it about? Was that preoccupation just me, or was it an inevitable part of the expat experience? Did I feel as foreign now, as a NIMAR employee with her own apartment, as I did when I lived with my Moroccan host family? Over the next week, my mother’s question continued to float around in my head. It wasn’t until the following weekend, as I discussed this same subject over breakfast with a new friend, that I began to realize more clearly how to answer those questions.

The thing is, that if you’ve grown up ethnically white in an American or Dutch middle class neighborhood, Otherness is probably not a feeling you are accustomed to. I’m not talking about that sense of ‘being different’ that we all experience from time to time, or that feeling of just not being able to ‘connect’ to any other individual in our environment. What I am referring to is not an internal feeling, but rather an externally imposed sense of difference. A perception of Otherness in the eyes of our social environment that is based on unchangeable (and often inborn) aspects of our appearance, and that we ourselves are unable to control or change. That sense of Otherness that anyone who has grown up as part of an ethnic minority will be overly familiar with.

Being seen as Other is an almost paradoxical form of being labeled on the basis of your appearance; it means that you are being categorized as falling-outside-of-all-culturally-established-categories. And as happens with any application of a stereotype, being ‘otherized’ forces you to confront difficult questions about who you are. About how you relate to the label you have been given, how your self-perception matches the way you are perceived by others – and about how you as a designated ‘outsider’ relate to the categories that are part of the socio-cultural establishment.

I have been an immigrant for much of my life, but until I came to Morocco, I never looked (or sounded) different from the majority in my environment. It wasn’t unless I myself chose to verbalize my non-American cultural background, that those around me would ever see or treat me as ‘different’. In Rabat on the other hand, it is not I, but rather my environment that chooses to underscore my difference. My status as an outsider is continuously and inescapably made explicit, regardless (it seems) of what I do or say. This Otherness is new to me, and I must admit that it is one of the aspects of expat life in Morocco that I have found most difficult to grow accustomed to. It makes me feel a little powerless, and I miss the anonymity of blending in with my environment.

I know that I do not look like a tourist. Most likely we are all sensitive to the little markers that tell you where a person is from, and what he or she is doing in their current location. You can tell by the way they walk, and the way they look around at their surroundings. It’s their dress, their choice of bag, and the style of nonverbal communication. All of these things can clue you in about a person’s nationality, or the length of their stay here in Morocco. But as much as it seems clear to people on the street that I am not a holiday traveler, I will nevertheless always be instantly recognized as an outsider, a visitor. Again, it’s in little things that this perception hides.

It’s in the things men choose to say to me as I walk past the table where they sit with their coffee and newspaper. All women receive attention on Moroccan streets, but I doubt a Moroccan woman is told in syrupy slick English that she is “very niiiiiice,” or that he “likes your size.”

It’s the fact that, after walking up and down the same streets for nine months, men still wish me “bienvenue au Maroc” when I am on my way home from work in the afternoon.

It’s the fact that I will never be able to rent a house for the same price as a Moroccan tenant (and that a landlord will always be more eager to rent to me), or get as low a price on a set of handmade cedar side-tables as my Moroccan colleague.

It’s in the fact that taxi drivers in Marrakech will persistently address me in English, even when I speak to them in (broken) Arabic.

And it’s in the fact that my French teacher had trouble remembering a few students’ names until the end of the course, but knew mine from the moment I introduced myself. In a strange and stubborn effort to refuse special treatment, I remember once waiting around along with everyone else at the end of class while the teacher called roll, not wanting to leave until he’d noted me as ‘present’. When he finally did come to my name, he looked at me with a slightly patronizing smile. Why did I wait around, he asked? Wasn’t it obvious that he’d noticed my presence? Didn’t I know that there was no point in me waiting around ‘just like the others’?

Aside from inescapable conspicuousness, being Other also means being judged by different standards. On one hand it means being afforded a greater lenience when it comes to abiding by the norms of social interaction. Foreigners are not expected to understand the rules, perhaps, and they are therefore more easily forgiven for trespassing the boundaries of propriety. But with that lenience also comes a different set of expectations. It is often assumed, for instance, that I have (lots of) money, that my rules of sexual or romantic propriety are radically different from those upheld in Morocco, that I harbor certain Orientalist impressions of Morocco, that I do not know how to cook, that I am Christian.

In the sense that all foreigners receive this particular kind of attention, I do think that the experience of Otherness is an inevitable part of expat life. But I am sure that my preoccupation goes a bit further than ordinary levels of awareness. It may in part be the newness of the experience that makes it so acute for me, but it might also simply be the fact that I’ve been preoccupied with the question of otherness ever since I first left the Netherlands as a 7-year old. Ever since that moment, I’ve been intrigued by questions like what it means to be an ‘insider’, how it is possible to combine two or more identities within a single ‘self’, or why it is that once you’ve uprooted yourself, you will never again be the ‘insider’ you once were. I think it’s because these questions are so central to the practice and theory of anthropology that this discipline appeals to me so much.

And most of the time, I can smile at this sense of Otherness. Given my pre-existing intrigue with the issue, the experience of it is interesting; it is a part of being in Morocco, and of being an anthropologist in general. I even think that this externally applied Otherness played a large role in helping me come to terms with the internal experiences of Otherness I’ve had for most of my life. But there are moments, more than I’d like there to be, when I am tired and give into frustration, when I become a little overwhelmed by the sense of powerlessness this constant perception of foreignness elicits in me. At those moments, my attempts at fitting in – at learning the language, dressing appropriately, abiding by the local rules of conduct – seem so futile, and a real inside-understanding of Morocco seems impossibly unreachable. At those moments, I want to retreat to my apartment, to the comfort of familiarity, and complain about Morocco’s own foreignness to me.

But for every person who reminds you that you are an outsider, there is someone else who embraces you and all your efforts to integrate. Such as the woman on the street who once asked me for directions in Arabic. Or the friendly shopkeeper at the mini marché across from my apartment, who always chats with me in Darija. Or a Fassi friend who refers to me as a Rbatia. And it is these brief little moments that make all those others seem very, very unimportant…

A First Interview

2009-07-30T10:54:00.000+01:00

On Tuesday evening, I conducted my first interview.

Actually, it was more of a consultation than a real interview and we spoke mostly about my research project, leaving no time to discuss the list of questions I had brought with me. Still, it felt good. It felt like a milestone, or better said a breaking of ground.

My application for a research permit, as well as my submission for the ethics committee, are temporarily on hold. July and August are slow months in Morocco, and the people and institutions upon whom I depend for these applications are on vacation or recess until September. This means that my project itself, too, is necessarily on hold. I’m starting to feel quite useless – not to mention restless. I’ve been in Morocco for about nine months now, and still haven’t managed to get my project started. First there were grants to wait for, then the American IRB; now it’s the Moroccan authorities. I know that these months have been valuable time that I’ve definitely needed for preparation – the participant-observation and language training I’ve done will certainly help me hit the ground running once I do get started. But still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m idly sitting here, twiddling my thumbs and wasting grant money, while there is so much that needs to be done.

And so, in my most recent state of restlessness, I came up with the idea of setting up meetings around Rabat with ‘consultants’: professionals in the field of mental healthcare who will not necessarily act as informants, but whose expertise will nevertheless help me to get a better sense of the infrastructure of care around here. I don’t need a permit to consult with a practitioner, and so this is something I could get started with now. For me, it serves a threefold purpose. First, I hope to consult these people about my own research project. I’d not only like to see what kinds of discussions are prompted by my research questions, but I’d also like some input and perhaps advice on the practical aspects of carrying out this project.

Second, I hope to ask each consultant some questions about the practice of their discipline in Morocco. This will broaden my perspective of what kinds of mental healthcare are available in Morocco and how they all relate to each other, and it will (perhaps, hopefully) elicit a greater spectrum of thoughts on why people believe the things they do about mental illness, and why they do the things they do to deal with it.

And finally, it’s a way both to prove to myself that my French is in good enough shape to conduct an interview, and to keep working on improving it. My cours de communication has proven that what my communicative competence mostly needs is practice, practice, and practice. But rather than hold off on interviewing until my French is ‘good enough’, I think that maybe there’s no better arena for that practice than these interviews themselves.

To make a long story short, this is how I found myself in a stylish and air-conditioned waiting room on a hot Tuesday afternoon at 6 PM, about to be seen by one of Morocco’s most prominent psychoanalysts. The Friday before, I had gathered my courage, picked up the phone, and made an original appointment for Monday at noon. That Monday at eleven, the psychoanalyst had called to reschedule – and so on Tuesday afternoon, I left my French class early and ran across town to the analyst’s office in Centre Ville. I arrived in a bit of a flustered and sweaty state, and was happy to sit down for a few minutes and peruse the available selection of magazines – all of them periodicals in which this psychoanalyst is occasionally featured. After fifteen minutes, the secretary led me in to see the analyst.

We spoke for about thirty minutes, mostly about my project. My four research questions prompted quite a bit of discussion on his part, and I mostly let him speak, trying frantically to write down whatever I could remember without losing my focus on what he was telling me. I wondered for a moment if I should take more control of the interaction, intervene, and make sure we get to all the questions I wanted to ask. This is something I’m uncomfortable with; I know from other interviews I’ve conducted that I wield that power of the interviewer very uneasily. In that sense I lend myself much too easily, perhaps, to the monologue format that so many discussions with Moroccan academics and professionals tend to take, and find it extra difficult to break out of that format.* But I decided it might actually be a good idea to let him talk and get some Moroccan-expert-input on my research questions – and that I could save my questionnaire for another meeting, after all.

And so he brainstormed about my research questions. He had some thoughts about re-phrasing a few of them, perhaps even splitting one into two separate questions. And ‘clients’ at the site of traditional healing? I should just call them ‘patients’, he said; ‘clients’ sounds a bit too commercial.

It is important, he also said, that we do not oppose ‘psychiatry’ and ‘traditional healing’. They are two completely different things, he explained, and in that sense they are not each other’s competitors. A patient seeks completely different things from a traditional healer; he doesn’t come to a psychiatrist with the same questions or the same expectations for treatment. I found this an interesting statement and wanted to ask him to elaborate – because so many psychiatrists do seem to feel the competition from traditional healing. What exactly was the difference between them then, I wanted to ask, and why is it that so many people do see these two forms of healing as competitors? But I didn’t ask those questions – by the time I had noted down the keywords of what he said, he’d moved on to a different subject and I felt it wouldn’t be useful to rewind the monologue.

Getting down to more methodological issues, he asked me if I’d been to my chosen site for traditional healing yet. No, I said, feeling a bit sheepish. But, I assured him, I was planning to very soon. Upon which he smiled, and a bit sarcastically asked me if I’d given any thought yet to how I’d get access to the place. According to him, the site has been “récupéré par la religion,” reclaimed by religion. This means not only that its new, more orthodox, framework has narrowed the site’s offer of traditional treatments and thus led its renown and reputation as a site for healing into decline, but also that I, as an (assumed) non-Muslim, will never be allowed to enter. I’d have to don a headscarf and prove myself by reciting the shahada** or fatiha,*** he said, suggesting its hopeless impossibility with the tone of his voice. A day later, a new friend said exactly the same things, though in a very different tone of voice. “Why not?” she encouraged, “We’ll try, and we’ll see what happens.” She’s right, and I guess I’m overdue for a visit to this site, but I do think I need to think about the possibility that I may need to find another site for my research. First of all, I don’t know that I want to fake being a Muslim to get in somewhere that I am not allowed to go, regardless of whether I agree with that rule (in Morocco, non-Muslims are not allowed inside mosques. The Hassan II mosque in Casablanca is the only exception). It brings up a lot of personal and research-related ethics-questions that might be better to avoid. And secondly, if this new recuperation by religion really has narrowed its offer of treatments, it may not be as good of a fit for my project, anyway.

As the psychoanalyst commented on my methodology and research questions and I frantically tried to write down what he said, I found myself a little resistant to the changes he suggested making. It’s not that he uttered any criticism – but I realize at these moments that I get a little resistant to any thoughts of changing my project. I’ve worked so hard on polishing and molding the proposal into its current shape, that the idea of deconstructing it again and putting it back together in a different way scares me a little. I know that projects are fluid and intangible things, even if proposals aren’t, and I know that most likely I’ll leave Morocco in two years with a very different project than the one I describe in my proposal. But still. Right now, the proposal is all I’ve got, and I don’t want to let it go just yet.

Nevertheless, I’m going to swallow that resistance. Input from Moroccan experts is exactly what I need – and none of the suggestions so far have been all that radical. And looking back on the interaction as a whole, I think I’m satisfied. Before I left I asked him if he’d be open to an actual interview about psychoanalysis at a later date, to which he assented – and assured me that he’d be more than happy to suspend his usual monologue format and just sit and answer questions (and thus assuaged all my frustration about not having asked follow-up questions; I’ll have my chance to revisit all those subjects, with the help of a tape recorder). Some explanations went better in French than others (explaining the point of person-centered interviews took some work. I hardly know how to explain that in English), but I think I made myself mostly understood.

But mostly? Mostly I was just proud that I had done this. That I had finally managed to do something research-related, and that I pulled it off.

* I was kind of surprised that even this man engaged in that kind of monologue. Aren’t psychoanalysts supposed to listen, rather than speak? But then again, this is a psychoanalyst who writes books and blogs about his viewpoints…
** the shahada is the profession of faith: “I attest that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is His Prophet.” Conversion to Islam consists of reciting this phrase three times in the presence of a witness. The shahada is also the concent of the five-times-daily call to prayer, and is recited at particular moments throughout life, though I do not know exactly when.
*** the fatiha is the first verse of the Qur’an.

National Pride

2009-07-27T09:31:00.002+01:00

The workshop at the Clinic that I went to a few weeks ago – that methodological workshop organized by three psychologists from the University of Amsterdam – started off with a bit of a misunderstanding. Justifying their reasons for seeking to construct a questionnaire that was multiculturally valid, the trio recounted the problems they often encounter with young patients of Moroccan origin. Not only do Moroccan families often have a different way of dealing with problematic children than Dutch families do, they explained, but most questionnaires aiming at diagnosis are very much based on Dutch cultural assumptions that are not relevant to their context.

A psychiatric resident, clearly bothered, immediately reacted: it was incorrect to claim that youth of Moroccan origin were more susceptible to psychological problems than their Dutch peers.

It took a few minutes of apologies and explanations by the Dutch psychologists to convince the residents that they had not meant to imply any such thing – that of course, psychological problems are just as common among Dutch adolescents, and that the clinical issue is simply the fact that Dutch practitioners are not trained to deal with anyone whose cultural context is something other than purely Dutch.

Then, an hour later, the residents struck a completely different tone.

The Dutch psychologists asked the Clinic’s residents to compile a list of typical aspects of Moroccan parent behavior. The residents took 15 minutes to brainstorm over coffee and sweets, and came back with a page full of items. I’ve already described the residents’ spontaneous division of these aspects into those of ‘traditional’ parents, and those of the ‘modern’ generation; but there was something else that I thought was interesting. Nearly all items on the list of ‘traditional’ characteristics were phrased as negatives. While the question had been neutral (in asking for “typical aspects”), the responses were given as “too much of X,” and “too little of Y.”

It is not only the negativity (this freely offered, unprompted negativity) of the residents’ list that struck me, but also its seeming contrast to the offense that the resident had taken earlier on, when she was under the impression that the Dutch presenters had insulted the psychological health of the Moroccan-Dutch. It is a contradiction that I notice often.

The Moroccans we foreigners meet seem highly concerned with giving us a positive portrayal of their country. They tell us of its wealth in resources, its seamless mix of a ‘thousand-and-one-nights’ exoticism with ‘modern’ development, its rich traditions and its great openness toward the western world. We are pressed upon to take note of the multiculturalism and ethnic diversity that characterizes Moroccan society, its tolerance and its hospitality. Islam solves all problems, everyone is nobly religious, and the King is a great innovator. Correspondingly, these people are quickly offended at any suggestion that we Westerners may harbor any negative stereotypes about their part of the world, and will confront such prejudice. There seems to be a particular sensitivity about any suggestions of Orientalist stereotyping and prejudice. Rightly so, perhaps – there are enough instances of ignorant bias that throw Morocco on a single heap with all ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ countries – but sometimes the sensitivity feels a bit disproportionate, and I find myself walking on egg shells trying to make sure I don’t offend.*

But theirs is not a nonstop pride. There are moments of self-expressed negativity that intersperse these exaltations, their unexpected bleakness leaving a bitter aftertaste. These are moments of self-effacing, dejected criticism at Morocco’s inefficiency, inequality, poverty, corruption, and ‘backwardness’. And it always catches me off guard.

My co-worker Choumissa likened it to a Moroccan expression her mother was wont to use: nderrbek ou ma nkhalli had yderrbek – “I’ll hit you, but I won’t let anyone else hit you.” Just as a parent will discipline her children but will not tolerate anyone else who tries to touch her offspring, Moroccans like to be self-critical, but do not accept any negativism from outsiders. This is something we all have in common, I think. We all like to gripe about what doesn’t work well in our respective societies. We all wish for change, and we’re all quick to denounce things we have issues with. But we are also sensitive to our country’s image in the eyes of foreigners. We all want the positive to prevail, and we all want visitors to come away with a sense of “wow, what a great country. When can I come back?” I remember how upset I used to get when Dutch classmates characterized the United States as a “cruel country.” How desperate I felt when I shyly mentioned to the offender that America also had a few redeeming qualities, and he responded by saying “yeah, sure. But overall, it’s still a cruel country.”

What surprises me most about Moroccan negativity, though, is not necessarily the fact that they criticize their country – we all do,** on occasion – but the fact that they do so in my presence. Perhaps I’m so used to being given an image edited to leave out the negative, that these sudden critiques stand out in stark contrast. How do you respond, when you praise Morocco’s people and natural beauty to a stranger who has been kind enough to invite you to their home, and they shoot back that “this society sucks, it’s going to hell. We’ve lost our norms and values”? Obviously, agreeing with this criticism wouldn’t be the right thing to do, but would an insistence on Morocco’s positive assets make such a person feel invalidated in their suffering?

What is this criticism ultimately about, I wonder? In the workshop at the Clinic, the negativity was directed toward characteristics of ‘traditional’ parenting. Was this a ‘performance of modernity’? An effort to downplay (through denunciation) ‘backward’ traditions and thus turn our gaze toward Morocco’s development and modernization? We were in a psychiatric facility after all – a bastion of ‘modernity’ and illustration of globalization. If this is it, if this is simply another way to edit particular things out of the image presented of Morocco, we might almost think of this as the flipside of the coin of propaganda in a country that seems to struggle with the question of how to combine tradition and modernity.

But then again, so much of that unprompted criticism doesn’t seem to be about tradition at all. It is societal – people lament the lack of efficiency, or the inequality, corruption, and other vices that halt Morocco’s development. Is it an apology, perhaps? Is it a judgment of their own country through what they think is my frame of reference? Is it an effort at translation?

Is it all, then, part of that same effort that encourages people to indulge us westerners in the façade of desert exoticism and other fantasy images of Morocco? Is it simply about catering to what they think is our frame of reference?

… and do we thus find ourselves at an impasse of images and stereotypes, in which we alternately struggle to break through them, and ultimately resort back to their familiarity in an effort to facilitate communication?

* And it makes me sad sometimes that, despite my best intentions to exude an openness, to remain aware that Morocco and every Moroccan are unique entities unto themselves, and to refrain from passing judgment, there is the occasional person who expects the worst because I am, after all, a Westerner, and something I say about Qur’anic interpretation will still be branded as ‘Orientalist’. I am aware of the fact that I may not always succeed in being as open as I’d like to be. I know that there are moments when my level of tolerance lies slightly lower than I’d like it to, and I give in to frustration. Also, I guess expressed sensitivity to prejudice helps to remind me of the importance of that openness. But still, I feel a bit defeated sometimes when I try to express an openmindedness and I am received as a ‘Westerner’ who, perhaps despite herself, will ultimately resort to generalization.
** Criticize our own country, I mean – not Morocco…

Participant-Observation Reconsidered

2009-07-23T10:29:00.004+01:00

I want to pick up on the thought I ended my last blog post with: where does the research end, and where does my life begin?

This question has come up in my blog posts before. I struggled with it when I returned to Morocco this past January, and found that I was now personally part of the daily life I tended to write about. It blurred the lines between observation and participation,* and I found that I had to re-think the tone and purpose of this blog. Months later I am much more comfortably settled here, but the issue remains; the question still sits there in the back of my mind, pressing ever so subtly against my brain’s centers for speech and reflection.

A friend of mine recently questioned the possibility of balancing work and private life in one of her blog posts. Sharing both her own experiences and those of some she knows, she wrote about the importance (and difficulty) of setting limits and making sure that work does not swallow up your private life. She emphasized how crucial it is that you guard the time you have for relaxation, for rejuvenation, and all other things that sustain your mind and body – but how easy it is to forget about these necessities when a deadline approaches. Her story made me think about my own situation in a new way, and I wondered if my ‘issue’ might simply be solved by being a better guard at the border between ‘work’ and ‘private life’.

The thing is, I’ve never thought of my research as ‘work’. In San Diego, ‘work’ was my teaching job. The development of my research proposal and everything that involved, that was me. Sure, it was difficult at times, there were externally imposed deadlines to keep, and I had moments of utter frustration – but that project was my creation, constructed through a smelting together of the questions, ideas, and geographical regions that I have had a passion for as long as I can remember. Developing that research project felt as much like work as playing the piano, or writing in my journals. And it still feels that way – perhaps even more so, now that I am ‘in the field’, as anthropologists are wont to say. I ‘work’ at the NIMAR, but my research? That’s me.

In reality, of course, that research is my work – it’s the foundation for my career, I’m being paid to do it, and it’s what I (hopefully) will be making my money from for a long time to come. And I am utterly fine with the fact that in that sense, the border between my ‘work’ and my ‘private life’ is a large and undefined gray zone. This is the nature of academia, where people personally identify with the research they do to such an extent that it becomes an inseparable part of them (sometimes to an unhealthy extent, perhaps), and it suits me. I’m a workaholic by nature. This may or may not always be good for my health, but at least I have a ‘job’ where I set the hours as well as the pace – and where I can thus take a break for an hour at any time I choose, to eat a healthy meal, go running, relax with a book or movie… or buy furniture for a new Moroccan apartment.

So my issue isn’t this. It is not the porosity of the border between work and personal life that bothers me. I don’t mind the fact that I sit behind my desk at home working on ideas for my project until late at night, or that an hour’s relaxation at a café in the city suddenly becomes fodder for observation when I engage in an interesting conversation with a Moroccan friend.**

What I do mind – and this is what the issue comes down to – is that the gray zone of work/personal life creates a constant sense of role confusion. The question that I began this post with (where does the research end and my life begin?) ultimately comes down to this more fundamental question: am I, and is my personality, an involved part of my daily life and the relationships I build, or not?

We’ve accepted the fact that one cannot ever be fully ‘objective’, and that all anthropologists observe and interpret from their own personally and culturally constructed vantage point. We even refer to our primary method of data collection as ‘participant observation’, the idea being that you cannot truly come to ‘know’ how something works unless you yourself participate in the act. But despite all this acceptance of subjectivity, the goal remains to preserve at least a kind of neutrality in your engagement with the field. This neutrality is necessary, I think, to ensure that informants will feel free to share their personal opinions with you, a stranger, without concern for judgment – but it still sets the participating and subjective anthropologist apart from members of the community in which he or she is conducting research.

In other words, an anthropologist behaves differently than an ordinary ‘participant’. And being in Morocco full-time, where any situation can turn into an opportunity for data collection, I am confused sometimes as to whether I should act as the anthropologist, or as a ‘person’. Let me illustrate.

Earlier this week I had a brief exchange with another student during our French class. Having just heard me mention that I did research on psychiatry, the young man asked me what I thought were the main differences between psychiatry in Morocco, and that in France or the United States. I responded by telling him that that was exactly what I intended to find out. He took this as cue to share with me his own opinion on the matter. The difference was, he explained to me, that there is no market for psychiatry in Morocco, because individual sufferers are able to solve their problems within and by virtue of their familial support network. Westerners on the other hand, who live individual lives cut off from any form of social support, will need a professional to help them solve their problems.

I reacted as an anthropologist. I told him that was an ‘interesting viewpoint’ and would have asked him how exactly that “soulagement” (relief) within the family circle worked, had monsieur Aziz not changed the subject and reminded us that we were in a class with twenty other students.

But the exchange left me frustrated. As monsieur Aziz talked, I reflected: had I not felt the need to react in an anthropologically correct manner, had I decided to engage as a regular student in the class (which I am, after all), I would have responded so differently. I would have reminded him to bear in mind that the ‘western world’ is not so radically different from Morocco on this count: we are not as extremely individualistic as some like to think, and for that matter, I don’t think the average Moroccan network of family support is as soft and springy as it is sometimes made to seem. Plus, what about the other side of collectivism: that sometimes suffocating form of social control, the fact that people are judged on the basis of their behavior, the fact that people are afraid that one black sheep will taint the entire family’s reputation? Couldn’t those issues lead to a whole new range of psychological troubles from which we lone cowboys of the West are blissfully spared?

When I act as an anthropologist, I leave myself and my opinions out of the interaction. My goal is to learn what Moroccans think, and any clearly voiced disagreement on my part would certainly not encourage them to freely share their thoughts with me. However, personal relationships are impossible to build on this kind of mental distance – you can’t forge a personal relationship (not a satisfying one, at least), if your personality is completely left out of the equation.

At my primary research site, it is clear what kind of situation I am in, and which role I am to play. But what confuses and sometimes frustrates me are these other contexts of social interaction. As I’ve said, any situation is potentially an opportunity for data collection. But does that mean that I am always supposed to be the (subjectively) neutral anthropologist? If I take a French class in Morocco, am I supposed to behave like an ethnographer and swallow my personal disagreements because I happen to be in Morocco? Or do I let myself be just-another-student – and if so, what do I do when a topic of interest to my project comes up?

For that matter, who am I supposed to be when I interact with the Moroccans I meet at the NIMAR? Like that female researcher working on gender issues. Do I try to be her friend, and hope to finally establish my first real friendship with a Moroccan woman, or is she someone who could help me in my research?

Then again, establishing a ‘real’ friendship with a Moroccan woman – the kind of friendship based on personal connections and openness – may not be as easy as I’d like it to be anyway. I’ve written before about the issues many of us foreign women have in connecting to our Moroccan counterparts. We seek personal connections, only to find out that there often isn’t a lot of room for our personalities in these relationships. Pleasant exchanges and meetings for tea go a long way in keeping loneliness at bay, but the true sense of mutual understanding that I sometimes crave is hard to find.

Seeing as there is no point trying to change this situation, perhaps the best thing to do is see this as an answer to my issue of confusion. To consider the guarding of certain opinions as my standard modus operandi, and thus free myself from worry about overstepping boundaries, falling out of character, and misjudging situations.

If there are any anthropologists among the few who read this blog, I’d love to know whether you’ve felt this same issue – and if so, how you dealt with it.

* I’ll get into the notion of ‘participant-observation’ a little later on, so hold that thought.
** My project concerns the institution of mental healthcare, but that does not mean that my ‘work’ ends at the hospital doors. Since I am interested in how these practices of mental healthcare relate to and are affected by larger socio-economic dynamics that dominate Moroccan society, any given setting or conversation provides me with data, in a sense.

Communication Francophone

2009-07-20T08:00:00.001+01:00

Two weeks ago, I started a month-long French class. Every Monday to Friday at four PM, I now head over to a language school across from Jour et Nuit (a coffee house and well-known landmark on this side of the medina’s Bab Chellah) for a two hour cours de communication. My teacher, monsieur Aziz, is a self-proclaimed thespian in his fifties who loves Molière and Hugo. Every afternoon he attempts to animate his weary students with larger-than-life gestures and facial expressions, walking back and forth across the front of the classroom as though it is a stage from which he attempts to enthrall a difficult audience.* Occasionally he coaxes us out of our seats for some creative play of our own, in which we awkwardly participate, as he reminds us that games are not about winning, but about sharing – and communicating, of course.

I had decided long ago that it was time for a class to ignite the francophone cells in my brain (I know they’re there! I’m just too nervous to ignite them on my own, not knowing for sure that they’ll work the way they’re supposed to), and three weeks ago I took a placement test at this school. As the consultant grading my test remarked that I seemed to have all the grammar down, I explained that I just wanted to learn how to speak sans devoir réfléchir – without having to think about it – and that it wouldn’t hurt to expand my vocabulary. The consultant seemed to know exactly what I was looking for, and enrolled me in this course.

I must admit that it is a different kind of cours de communication than I had expected. Focused less on linguistic barriers than psychological ones, we work on things like learning how to speak without getting flustered by attention from others, discerning the purpose or intent behind a communicative message (the acte illocutoire), and evaluating each other’s efficiency in getting a message across. The goal of this course is, in monsieur Aziz’s words, nothing less than a change in our sense of self, and the elimination of certains sentiments négatives.

This is not precisely what I had had in mind; this course is not so much about learning how to speak sans réfléchir, but rather about how to effectively turn what you want to say into an actual expressed message. But in the end, I figure, communication is communication – does it really matter what the nature is of the barriers that keep you from living up to your potential? What I needed is a push in the back, an environment where I was forced to speak up – and that’s essentially what I’ve gotten. And I do notice some difference. I seem less worried about just speaking, and am discovering that I can make myself perfectly understood in almost any situation. The only barrier I have left is the intimidation I feel around my very adeptly francophone co-workers…

My fellow students are, for the most part, timid high school graduates stuck in that liminal phase between puberty and adulthood, where you suddenly realize that your decisions not only matter, but can affect the entire course of your life. As we went around on day one to introduce ourselves, they all very un-timidly attested to a desire to overcome their shyness, and I imagine that, faced with the weighty decision of what-to-do-next, these young adults are perhaps attempting with this course to turn themselves into direct and fearless go-getters. Timidity is a theme they repeatedly bring up themselves. As we subjectively evaluate each others’ efforts at communication,** students constantly remark that the speaker’s main problem seems to be shyness. “Is this a problem you often encounter?” they’ll ask in therapeutic voices. “Do you have the same trouble when you speak Arabic?”

There is an intimate atmosphere, a sense of we’re-all-in-this-together, that seems to put everyone at ease and invites everyone to speak. However, this intimacy gets disturbed once in a while by my presence. I am clearly an outsider, being the only non-Moroccan in the room, the only one who seems to already be familiar with the communicative theories monsieur Aziz enlightens us on (he even gave us a basic tutorial on semiology – I had an instant déjà-vu of my days as a first-year anthropology grad student…), and the only one who seems to be here for linguistic improvement. Monsieur Aziz takes advantage of this sometimes, and uses me as a kind of stick behind the door to remind everyone to do his or her best.

“If you don’t speak up and share a story,” he will say, “what will Charlotte here think about Moroccans and their ability to communicate? Do you want to give her the impression that Moroccans cannot express themselves about this particular subject?”

The students will then smile, they’ll look at me, their timidity will re-emerge, and I’ll feel as though I’ve become part of the ‘other side’, an onlooker and observer, rather than a fellow student.

This happens at other moments here and there, too – like when we’re asked to prepare a presentation as a group, and the other members in my circle begin to speak the Arabic they’re ultimately more comfortable with. There’s always a moment where they’ll suddenly stop in their tracks, look at me, and begin apologizing. I’ll then tell them that it’s ok, mashi moushkil (no problem), that I understand what they’re saying – and they’ll smile a bit at my budding knowledge of Arabic and continue, but the intimacy is gone and I can see that their self-consciousness is back.

And I do it myself, too. There are moments, when monsieur Aziz explains a theory I’m already familiar with, for example, when I step back and transform from participant to observer. I’ll look at the ways in which our teacher interacts with the students, and the way they react to him. I’ll notice how students’ comments seem very crafted, full of buzz-words they know are important in this class (like “timide”), very catered toward what they think the teacher wants to hear. I’ll remark how very few people seem just to say what they think – very few apart from the teacher, that is, and I’ll notice how the students get a little flustered when monsieur Aziz brings up topics that are not commonly discussed in public. Like how you met your first boyfriend, or how it’s possible to be an atheist.

And so I put myself on the outside, trying to be the ethnographer, hoping to get an insider’s view of a Moroccan classroom. I will go quiet, waiting to see how others respond to a question thrown into the room by monsieur Aziz, smiling at his expectant expression. Until I realize that I am thereby thwarting my own success as a student in this class – which is ultimately the role I signed on (and paid) to play.

But I’m enjoying myself – I like the class, I observe with interest as the tone of the session shifts between ‘intimate’ and ‘performative’, and I’m even a little intrigued at how I myself morph from participant into observer, and back. It’s a new kind of hybridity that I’m feeling constantly as I set up my own life here in Rabat – as I try to figure out which parts of my experiences here are research, and which are just that, life.

* there is an argument to be made for the idea that teaching is a kind of performance, of course… and vice versa, that performance is a kind of teaching?
** it took the teacher at least twenty minutes to explain what he meant by such subjective evaluation, and how it worked. The students seemed to have a very difficult time understanding that there is not simply one correct way, and one wrong way, to communicate. That it is ok, and sometimes better, to evaluate without passing a definitive judgment. That there may be no such thing as a completely accurate and objective judgment in the first place.

Update

2009-07-19T21:30:00.001+01:00

One week later, both samsars have been paid (yes, I paid samsar number one a small fee as well), as has been my security deposit and rent. I have an official lease, and have signed up with the local utilities company for water and electricity. I have scrubbed my new apartment from top to bottom, have fallen even more in love with it, and have made various trips to Marjane for household necessities (such as sheets, plates, trash cans, pillows). I am now the proud owner of a small fridge and TV (although neither is in my possession yet; I am awaiting delivery tomorrow), and plan to make an order for basic furnishings toward the middle of this week.

These various expenses mean that I am a bit strapped for daily cash, and my old apartment is in a bit of disarray as I have begun to transfer items to the new place – but none of that matters.

I’m so excited!

Nukat* Maghribia - poking fun

2009-07-16T12:40:00.002+01:00

As Americans have their Canadians, and the Dutch (and French?) have their Belgians, so the Moroccans have their Berkanis. Every society likes to have a neighbor to make fun of, another group they can have an innocent laugh at without concern for political correctness.

Unlike that of the US or Holland, Morocco’s butt of jokes is not a foreign neighbor; there’s nothing funny about Morocco’s relationship with Algeria, I guess… Instead, all Moroccans laugh about Berkane (pron. ber-CAN), a small town in the Northeast of Morocco.

By now it’s happened so often that I’ve found myself surrounded by Moroccans rolling on the floor in laughter at a new Berkani joke, that I’ve decided to translate and share a few of them with you. It’s often said that humor is very culture-bound, but I think we can all recognize a little of the fun-poking in these jokes. What do you think? Are these funny to you?

War

Oujda is at war with Berkane. After months of intensive fighting, the two armies have literally dug themselves into a stalemate. The soldiers spend their days laying low in parallel trenches, just hoping the enemy will emerge on the surface in an offensive attempt – so they can shoot them down.
Then, one day, an Oujdi general comes up with a plan. “I’ve got an idea,” he announces. All Berkani’s are called ‘Mimoun’, right? Well, we’re going to use that. Get ready, and wait for my instructions.”
So that morning, the Oujdi soldiers line up in their trench. They listen as the Berkanis do the same in theirs; once they hear that they’ve settled, the Oujdi general gives the signal that this is it. He rises up, and calls out: “Mimoun?” “Yes?” the Berkanis collectively respond, and rise up – upon which the Oujdi’s shoot them all down.
Obviously, the Berkani’s want revenge. The Oujdi’s cannot just get away with this. “Aren’t all Oujdi’s called Bekkay?” the Berkani general rants. “Well, we can do exactly what they did!”
And indeed, the next morning, after all soldiers line up and get ready for another day of stalemate waiting, the Berkani general raises his head out above the trenches and calls out, “Bekkay?” – and waits for the Oujdi soldiers to respond in unison. Instead, he only hears the Oujdi general’s voice: “who’s asking?”
Upon which all Berkani’s rise up, and call out, “we are!”

Accident

A guy from Berkane is driving into town. As he approaches the central square, he suddenly realizes his brakes have been severed and he cannot stop the car. Panicked, he calls a friend of his and explains the situation. “What do I do??” he cries out in utter desperation.

His friend is a bit more level headed. “OK,” he reasons. “What do you see in front of you?”

The driver scans the horizon. “I see a market on the left, a mosque on the right, and three people walking on the road in front of me.”

“OK. This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to go in the direction where you’ll hurt the least amount of people,” the friend on the phone advises. So where are you going to go?

“I’m going to head for the three people,” the driver cries.

Later that day, the driver’s friend turns on the television to watch the news. He’s shocked at the main story: a large accident at the market in town, eighty people dead, and massive destruction. On the left end of the screen, he suddenly sees his friend’s car, upside down on the ground. What on earth happened, he wonders? He calls his driver friend.

“What happened? He cries. “I thought you were going to head for the three people on the road?”

“I was,” the driver sobs. “But those three people turned left to head to the market!”

Hole in the road

A major pothole had fallen into a busy road in Berkane. People were constantly falling in, and this was becoming a problem: before anyone noticed what had happened and called an ambulance, the sad victim was already dead. This hole was racking up too many casualties, and it was time to do something about the problem.

All smart people in Berkane got together to talk about possible solutions. It took all day, and lots of bad ideas were proposed, but finally, they came up with a good idea. From now on, they’d station an ambulance next to the hole, so no time would be lost calling the emergency number and waiting for the paramedics to arrive.

The next morning, an ambulance was stationed next to the hole, and every time someone fell in, paramedics would immediately hoist the victim out, load him into the van, and rush him to the hospital.

Yet the new situation wasn’t perfect. Victims were still dying on their way to the hospital. Another solution had to be found, and so all the smarties of Berkane once again convened. They talked, and talked, and it took all day. But finally, someone proposed a real solution. It was a real smart guy, someone who’d gone to school in Europe. We’re going to close up that hole, he said…

… And then we’ll re-dig it right in front of the hospital…

Just one more non-Berkani joke, just for fun:

Once upon a time, a young couple had their first baby. This was clearly an extraordinary child with great intelligence. He spoke his first word at six months of age: “aunt,” he said. His parents found this a bit disconcerting. Shouldn’t his first word be ‘mommy’, or ‘daddy’? Why is he talking about his aunt? The next day, the phone rang. A family member on the other line informed the couple that the baby’s aunt had passed away.

The baby’s next word was “grandpa.” And the same thing happened: only hours after the baby spoke, the couple received a phone call that the baby’s grandpa had passed away.

The parents began to worry about this dark power their baby seemed to have. The pattern continued: every time the baby spoke, he’d mention a person – and a short while after, this person would suddenly and inexplicably die. It was starting to get worrisome.

Then, one day, the baby finally spoke one of the words his parents had so badly wanted to hear: “daddy.” They freaked out – this was it. The baby’s father was paralyzed with fear of his impending death. But the parents’ frantic clamoring was suddenly interrupted by the door bell.

It was their downstairs neighbor, clearly distressed. “Come quick and help!” he cried. “The janitor just dropped dead!”

* Nukat is the plural of nukta, which means 'joke'.

Postscript: Cheating on your Samsar

2009-07-14T08:00:00.001+01:00

Yesterday afternoon, I ran into samsar number one at a neighborhood grocery store. After a friendly exchange of ça va’s he asked me, had I found a place yet? I nodded.

“I found a great place,” I told him, “I’m very satisfied, and thanks for all your help showing me all those other places.”

He smiled politely. “That’s great,” he responded. “Where is it?”

As it happens, the apartment I found is located in a building that this samsar had also mentioned to me once. He knew of an apartment on the first floor; what I actually saw with another samsar and took, was a unit on the second floor. But as soon as I explained to samsar number one where the apartment was, I became a bit uncomfortable with the suspicion that he might conclude I had rented the same apartment he had first mentioned to me. I was right.

He was hurt. It had been him who had first alerted me to that unit, he lamented. I responded by reminding him that he’d mentioned a first floor place and I was now renting on the second floor, but this made him angrier. First floor, second floor, it was the same place! How was he supposed to remember exactly on which floor the apartment was?

I tried to reason with him by reminding him of other facts – that he’d offered to show me that place, that I’d nodded in agreement, but that he had never taken me back there to see it.

He did not want to hear it. He was hurt, and he wanted a commission. He insisted I have Farid call him to discuss money.

Before I even had a chance to share this story with Farid, the latter’s phone rang. I could hear the samsar’s protests about my two-timing on the other side of the line, as Farid listened with a smirk on his face.

Farid isn’t worried. So what if he’s mad? He says. He doesn’t deserve a commission, and he won’t get one.

He’s right. But I can’t help being a little worried. I never like the idea of people being mad at me, and I definitely don’t like the idea of a Moroccan samsar being mad at me. I don’t want an enemy in the neighborhood. I also don’t want to give him money, though. I hope I don’t run into him any time soon. If I do, I kind of hope that calm reasoning will make him understand.

But that’s probably wishful thinking…

Apartment Hunting

2009-07-13T08:00:00.003+01:00

One Saturday afternoon in early July, Farid and I strolled down the streets of Hay Hassan, my neighborhood of residence. Here and there, we’d spot a gardien walking up and down the streets, directing drivers as they maneuvered their cars in and out of parking spots along the curb. Recognizable by their deep blue lab coats, gardiens are, as their name suggests, guardians of a sort. Their most direct task is to oversee the parking in their street, and it is for this that they are paid. But by spending their days outside walking up and down the road, they often become ultimate experts on the goings-on in the neighborhood. They know the security guards, shopkeepers, and apartment building supers (likewise men who spend their days outside on the sidewalks). They know what businesses are doing well, and which are struggling. They know how late you came home last night and who your father is. They know who lives in their neighborhood, and where one might find a vacant apartment.

Whenever we spotted a gardien, Farid would approach the man. Every conversation was preceded by a shake of hands, a “salam aleikoum” and the usual “labas? Bikheir? Sahha labas? Barak llahoufik” (“how are you? How’s it going? How’s your health? Thanks so much”) that Moroccans exchange not only with friends, but any person they greet.

Preliminaries done, Farid would get to the point:

“So, I was wondering, do you know if there are any vacant apartments around here?”

As the gardiens ran through their mental files, Farid would point to me.

“It’s for this seyyida nasraniyya,* she’s looking for an unfurnished place for a year and a half.”

With this last sentence, Farid immediately placed our trump cards on the table.

“You’re in a good position,” Farid had assured me on our walk. “Landlords love renting to foreigners.”

“Why is that?” I wondered out loud.

“Because they always leave again at some point. He never has to worry about getting stuck with you in his apartment when he wants to raise the rent. A year and a half is perfect – not so short that he’s going to need to look for someone new in a few months, but not so long that he’s going to worry about you never leaving.”

In a very prosaic and politically incorrect sense, this seemed completely logical. A sad sign of Morocco’s ambiguous national pride – and more about that in a later blog post – but I could see how this made sense from a landlord’s perspective.

“But you’d better let me do the talking,” Farid cautioned. “They’d give you a really hard time, because they’re going to want to charge you a lot in rent.”

“Why?” I responded with confusion. “If they want to rent to a foreigner so badly, shouldn’t they charge us less, as a kind of incentive?”

Farid shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way,” he explained, with a smile. “Try convincing a landlord that a foreigner doesn’t have a lot of money. He wants a piece of your fortune.”

And so began my search for an apartment in Rabat. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had decided to exchange my tiny and furnished studio for slightly larger quarters that I’d furnish with my own purchases. I had taken action soon after writing that post by browsing the internet, with Google’s help, but without much luck. Apartment hunting in Morocco is not that straight forward – something I, a child of the Craig’s List era, found a bit frustrating. Like many other things, apartment hunting in Morocco can be very simple, but only if you know how it works, where to go, and what to say. In order to avoid paying high fees to a realtor or management company, the idea is to network a little with people in the ‘know’, such as gardiens, and to simply ask around.

A gardien is likely to refer you to a samsar. Another type of man who spends his days patrolling the sidewalks, samsars are, in Cynthia’s words, ‘realtors of the street’. They work independently, simply know of vacant units in the area, and have the numbers of landlords and supers programmed into their phones. Armed with these resources, they act as intermediaries between seekers of apartments, and seekers of tenants. In return, they’ll ask both you and the landlord for a small commission once you’ve been satisfactorily matched.

Apparently, samsars also simply know who’s looking for apartments. The day after viewing a unit with a samsar that Farid himself had called, another showed up at the NIMAR doorstep, asking for me. Too bad that apartment you looked at yesterday didn’t work out, he told me in Moroccan-accented French. But, he assured me, he had a few other apartments I might be interested in. One bedroom, right? Later that day, he promised, he’d show me two beautiful units.

Out with this new samsar later that evening, we ran into samsar number one. The two men greeted each other cordially, but I soon sensed a bit of tension. In a tone of slightly hurt pride the first samsar asked me, was this guy going to show me apartments? With the dawning sensation creeping up on me that I was somehow cheating on my first samsar, I tried to sugar coat the truth and said, “he might know of a few options, but I haven’t seen anything yet. Do you have any new places for me?” He nodded, leaned in toward me and whispered that he might know of something opening up very close to the NIMAR. He’d let me know more tomorrow.

With that, we said goodbye, and samsar number two and I continued on our way. We walked in a large circle, only to end up at an apartment building located right next to the spot where we’d run into samsar number one. Number two confessed: we’d taken a detour. “I don’t want the other guy to see my marchandise, you know.” Of course – no samsar has any claims to any of the vacant apartments. They simply know what’s empty, and the first one to match landlord with new tenant pockets the commission.

Farid, who was himself out of town and unavailable to accompany me on these viewings, had told me not to discuss prices. I was simply to look, to tell samsar and landlord I’d think about it, and leave the bargaining up to Farid: he’d have a much better chance of convincing landlords to lower their rent, he explained. Ok, I’d agreed, anything for a chance at a lower rent. But in practice, it was impossible not to talk money. At every single viewing, I hardly had a chance to get in the door before the samsar would initiate that conversation by naming a price. Looking around the apartments and realizing that either I’d have to lower my standards or increase my maximum price, I’d explain every time that I found that rent rather high for a place where I’d have to paint, to install a water heater, or to glue tiles back to the kitchen wall.

This seemed to be cue for samsar and landlord to delve into their collection of sales strategies.

“This is a beautiful apartment,” they’d say, “you won’t find better at this price. It’s quiet, it’s safe, and it’s big.”

Or they’d ask, “what do you need to time to think for? You don’t need a second opinion, it’s you who needs to decide.”

“Other people are interested,” they’d then warn, “so if you wait until tomorrow, the place may be gone. You could, of course, give us an avance (an advance) now, and then we’ll give you the keys immediately. Come on! This is a great apartment, you won’t find anything better!”

The thing is that these strategies tend to work on me. I’m always sold on artificial inflation of a commodity. Someone else is interested? I’d better say yes now, because what if I really don’t find any better?

I felt torn: the apartments I’d seen hadn’t been perfect. I’d needed to convince myself that I could live there – if I painted that wall, perhaps, and maybe the kitchen would look better once I cleaned a little and fixed that cabinet. Were they right, would I never find anything better for the price I’d indicated as my maximum? Maybe my expectations were the problem, rather than the state of these apartments. I’d never looked for a place in Morocco before; maybe my expectations were unrealistic. But in the end, I stuck with my doubts and resisted the pressure. Restlessly but surely, I stuck to my guns and made clear I’d need time to think. If the apartment was gone by the time I’d decided, too bad. I’d move on to the next vacant unit. There would always be another one, I reasoned, and I was in no hurry.

I saw about eight units in this way. All were dirty, and all needed some work. A paint job, a water heater, a new lock on the door. Some places were better than others, but none felt right. I began to notice, too, that Moroccan one-bedrooms are not what I had had in mind. One-bedroom apartments in this city are not meant for single individuals. They are meant for families who sleep in the living room, as my host family had done. Such an apartment may thus have only two rooms, a chambre and a salon, but that salon is always huge. Often, it is divided in two by a low wall: the idea is to create one formal, and one informal living room. For a family of four in no need of privacy, this works. My host sister in Salé and her family lived just fine in an apartment with this layout. But for a single tenant, it’s inefficient. What would I do with two living rooms? I’d drown in that sea of space.

Curiously enough, 2-bedroom apartments seem to come with a much more proportional living room. You get the same amount of space as in a 1-bedroom, but conveniently walled off. This works better for my single tenant status. First of all, portioning out the space in smaller pieces means the dearth of stuff that I will have, even after I buy furniture, won’t be as noticeable. And secondly, an additional chambre gives me the possibility of renting out that second room if I ever decide that I do want a roommate.

And so it is with a 2-bedroom apartment that I ended up. It was the last place I saw (shown to me by samsar number three), and that feeling I’d missed with all the other units came to me as soon as I stepped inside the door. It was in good condition. It was clean. Nothing needs fixing. And I felt comfortable there. It is light and airy. I have a balcony off the living room, a beautiful and functional bathroom, and lots of closet space. Best of all: the house comes with a satellite dish already installed, and the kitchen is already outfitted with a stove (this is not a given in Morocco – a stove and all other appliances are generally the tenant’s responsibility to purchase. I will, therefore, be buying a fridge…). I raised my maximum price in order to get this apartment and will thus be paying more in rent than I do now, but I’ve concluded that it’s worth it, to have an apartment where I truly feel comfortable. A home base within a world that still tends to get a little strange at times.

I’m already looking forward to having space to walk around and store my things, to long baths in that new tub, and quiet evenings with a book and glass of wine on my balcony.

* “seyyida nasraniyya,” literally, means ‘Christian lady’. But, much like we often think ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ world are the same thing, ‘nasraniyya’ means ‘Western’ as much as it does ‘Christian’.

Knowledge and Education

2009-07-09T08:57:00.001+01:00

One of the tasks that have befallen me in my new position as official NIMAR staff member is the development of a semester program in social sciences. It’s the latest addition to the in-house study abroad programs we offer to Dutch students (currently we have only programs in Arabic), and its inaugural run is to start this fall.

In its most basic set-up, this semester consists of a five-month program, divided up into four phases of about four weeks each. The third of these phases is an independent research project, for which the students will spend the first two phases preparing – by way of lectures on all aspects of Moroccan society, Arabic classes, and workshops on research methods and other matters of practical concern. The idea is to have these various classes taught by Moroccan researchers and professors, as a way to truly submerge our students into the Moroccan world of social science.

Since the research project is to be independently designed and carried out by the student, it’s mostly the first two phases of the program that my co-developer Cynthia and I have been working on. Now that it has been a year since I last taught my undergrads in San Diego, I’m apparently brimming with ideas. I’m dreaming of intimate seminars à la the University of Chicago, democratic debates, field trips to relevant Moroccan institutions, and exchanges with local students. I want to design a curriculum that’s heavy on student participation and casts the teacher more in the role of a guide than that of a lecturer.

Except where I’m the dreamer, Cynthia is the realist. At first I found it a little frustrating that she’d often put the brakes on a new idea I had – but I soon realized she’s right. After ten years in Morocco, she knows the resources and tools we have to work with in a way that I don’t. She knows that it’s all very nice to dream of democratically run seminars and teachers-as-guides, but in the end, the Moroccan educational system just isn’t ready for it.

Basically, Moroccan professors are lecturers. They teach by presenting material to a group of students, who write it all down and then attempt to reproduce it on a test. There is no culture of debate, no habit of questioning.

I think this is why. It is always true (in my opinion) that knowledge equals power and authority. But sometimes, that power exercised by virtue of knowledge makes it seem as though this is the only knowledge that is valid. Knowledge thus becomes synonymous with ‘truth’. Translating this to a classroom setting, this means that ‘truth’ is possessed by the teacher, and that his or her relationship to the student is skewed along a very steep power differential. There is no room for discussion in the classroom, because truth is not to be questioned. Learning, then, is simply a matter of receiving and absorbing. It is never about exchange and sharing.

I get the sense that it is a general tendency in this country to equate ‘knowledge’ with ‘truth’. I notice the imprint of this idea on a lot of people I meet – who see knowledge as something either to be transmitted or absorbed, rather than something to be shared. I feel it with the university students I have befriended, who never seem to really get what I mean when I talk about plans for an exchange of ideas between Dutch and Moroccan students – why didn’t I like their idea of inviting a professor who could really teach our Dutch students everything they wanted to know? I notice this tendency also with the researchers I’ve met, who have real trouble confidently presenting their research project and findings to others. On paper, they seem like wonderfully ambitious people with equally lofty research questions – but once asked to present their plans in public, they explain what they do in soft mumbles and stutters and it is as though their work instantly dissolves into a pile of ashes in the palms of our hands.

I notice it, too, among the holders of PhDs who have teaching positions at a university – and whose idea of a discussion seems to be a monologue. They have completed the transformation from student to teacher, and now possess all the authoritativeness of the more powerful knowledge-giver. Once they hear that I am an anthropology student, even the linguists and political scientists insist on explaining to me everything I need to know about anthropology.*

And finally, I notice it in the comments I pick up from other foreigners here. In the laments, for instance, about how difficult it is to really connect to Moroccan women. Not only because their lives are so different but also because it’s so hard to have a discussion with them – either they indicate that they don’t know enough about a topic to discuss it, or they cannot accept your view on something when they’ve learned something else as being true. I’m reminded also of a comment made by the University of Amsterdam psychologists who were here for the workshop at the Clinic. They’d been so relieved at the psychiatric residents’ active participation, because when the researchers had tried to conduct a workshop here before they’d all been completely mute. The difference, we all realized, was this: Dr. Chikri (the Clinic’s director) had attended this first workshop. He had answered every single one of their questions, and his residents had remained demurely silent in their seats. During this most recent workshop, the residents had been liberated from their subordinate positions by a budget meeting that claimed Dr. Chikri’s presence – as a result, they had been free to participate, and eagerly did so.

Basically, it seems as though there is no middle ground here between ‘knowledge’ and ‘ignorance’. There is only one version of the truth, and in every ‘exchange’ of thought there is always one person who possesses it, and one person who does not. This makes any plans for democratic seminars and discussions a little unrealistic.

An additional problem is the state of social science as a discipline. Departments of sociology and political science are hard to come by (anthropology being entirely nonexistent), and often hide deep within the recesses of a larger ‘faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines’ (the actual ‘sciences sociales’ here mostly refers to the disciplines of law and economics). To give you an example: Cynthia and I recently paid a visit to a research laboratory for psychopathology. It was a single room with a few empty desks, where a sole professor shared his coffee with us as he explained that there are but two departments of psychology in the country (one here in Rabat, and one in Fes) and no more than fifteen psychologists. Fifteen. The problem, he explained, was that anyone with any ambition packs up and leaves the country in search of greener academic pastures. The talented people pursue an education abroad, and once they’ve tasted academia there, Morocco is “like a cold shower,” as he put it.

A Dutch demographer, in Rabat for the conference on labor migration that Cynthia and I organized, complained of the state of research. “There is so much data!” She exclaimed to us in desperation, “but no one’s doing anything with it!” She herself had begged to be allowed to use this data, stored at a national demographic institute – and after countless letters and official stamps, her permission had been granted. She was hoping to set up a collaborative project with local researchers, but found it very heard to motivate her Moroccan colleagues.

It’s possible (likely, even?) that this underdeveloped state of the social sciences has something to do with the view of knowledge that I described above (and perhaps a little also with the limitations on political freedom?). Without a tradition of questioning, it’s difficult to really do any social scientific research – and it’s no surprise that the talented researchers wish to do their work elsewhere.

In any case, this dearth of academic individuals makes it difficult for us to recruit any potential teachers for our program. Add to this, as a third limiting factor, a language barrier. As much as I do think Morocco is beginning to realize the necessity of English for the realization of its global ambitions, the language of academia in Morocco still and stubbornly remains French. Unfortunately, this is not a language most Dutch students speak, but there is no more than a handful of faculty in Rabat who speak sufficient English to lecture in this language. Cynthia and I discovered during our meetings with other foreign educational institutions in Rabat that, likewise faced with this barrier of communication, they often partner with the same few Moroccan professors we often collaborate with. No wonder they are always so strapped for time…

The thing is – education is not unimportant in Morocco. To the contrary: I think both the public and the government realize that education is the key to development and to a better future. Both make investments in education. But the problem is that this investment is made pragmatically – in the areas with the highest rate of return. People and funds flow not toward universities, but toward private institutes of higher education, all with acronymed names like ILCS, IIHEM, HEC, or ENCG, that teach management, IT, and marketing. It becomes a vicious cycle from here, of course – more money means better teaching methods, which improves education, which attracts more students, which in turn brings in more money. It leaves very little for the universities, that are part of the public education system that the government offers to its citizens at no charge, and that, suffering from a lack of funding, have no choice but to stick with outdated teaching methods and a dearth of resources.**

So what to do? It certainly has to do with money – universities will never be able to stimulate the development of research if there are no funds to do so. But it’s also about changing the definition of ‘knowledge’ – about democratizing it, making it available to everyone and recognizing the fact that it’s within everyone’s reach (money is one way in which to ensure that availability, of course). And finally, I think institutes like the NIMAR have a responsibility here, too. Because the vestiges of imperialism are also implicated in the underdevelopment of academic research in former colonies like Morocco. After all, imperialism used the knowledge-as-truth concept in support of its mission: it used the power of scientific research to validate its subjugation of other peoples, and cast colonies in the role of subjects, of knowledge absorbers (knowledge about ‘civilization’, in this case) and never knowledge producers. Perhaps it is our responsibility, then, to make a concerted investment in the development of ‘indigenous’ research in these countries (to use a very colonial word). By initiating and stimulating collaborative projects between Moroccan and European or American researchers, for instance. As that Dutch demographer suggested, and as we realize given the limitations of Moroccan social science, this may be difficult. But it must be done, and in order to do so, we have to meet it halfway.

* It has made me realize, though, that I need to stop introducing myself as a student. I do this because in the US I am called a PhD student. In most other countries, however, you are considered a researcher in this stage of your academic training. I’m trying to get used to presenting myself as such. It still always feels a little bit like fraud, because I haven’t actually started my research yet…
** This in many ways maintains the divide between rich and poor, since only the former can afford the superior education of private institutions, and thus only those who already have money have access to the better and higher paying jobs.

Fashion Forward

2009-07-06T07:46:00.002+01:00

I don’t have enough appropriate summer clothing.

I have about five outfits that I consider fitting for the Rbati* summer streets. By week’s end, I’ve rotated through them, and my sense of fashion-consciousness dreads having to bore my colleagues with the same ensembles during the next week. Once my financial situation stabilizes a bit, I definitely plan to devote some time and funds to the pleasant task of shopping.

Rbati girls and women do not walk around in the long black abayas you may associate with women in Saudi Arabia. You may be familiar with the Moroccan jellaba – the hooded dress/coat that is worn by men and women alike and comes in all colors of the universe – but even this garment is worn mostly by generations over forty years of age. Moreover, I’d estimate that no more than thirty-five percent of young women wear a headscarf, or veil. Fashion in Rabat, in other words, comes across to me as a colorful and very eclectic mix of styles and tastes, where nearly anything goes.

Of course there is the occasional individual with a somewhat challenged sense of style, but overall I get the impression that Rbati girls and women take pride in their appearance. Their outfits are always perfectly put together. They are color coordinated to the smallest details (the colors and patterns may be a bit too bright for my taste, but I think this is a cultural difference), their shoes always match their purse, and they never forget to accessorize. A headscarf always matches the color of the clothing, and some women even skillfully combine multiple scarves to create an intricate pattern effect of colors on their head. And by the way, a headscarf by no means implies that you can’t wear fabulous earrings (or even flowers pinned by your ear), and the effects of eye-shadow and kohl always beautifully accentuate the eyes.

This fashion sense comes in all varieties of modesty. There are girls and women, of course, who choose to cover themselves. Underneath their brightly colored spaghetti-strapped dress they’ll wear a turtleneck sweater, and underneath a knee-length skirt they’ll sport a pair of leggings. Should they choose to wear (tight) jeans, they’ll combine it with a longer cardigan or top that covers their behind. Some women go a step further and noticeably take care to hide the shape of their figure, choosing loose-fitting ensembles such as wide skirts and a longer variety of the headscarf.** But you will also come across the occasional girl who wears less than what I grew accustomed to among the eighteen year old Californian college students I taught last year. I see girls who’ve chosen to wear leggings as pants and pair it with a low-cut halter top, the straps of a brightly colored bra conspicuously showing on her back.

I often find myself at Marwa, a home-grown chain of stores not unlike H&M, fingering ambiguous clothing items. Among the harem pants, leggings, summer dresses and checkered blouses hang certain patterened and multicolored items (further adorned with bows, lace, pleats, and so on – nothing is ‘too much’, it seems) whose purpose I can never determine. They’ll be too long for a top, too short for a skirt, and I’ll wonder, how on earth one is supposed to wear such a thing? And these slightly see-through pants, are these meant to be worn on their own, or underneath something else? Unsure of what to do with such items, I usually abstain from making any purchases. The girls I see on the street, however, have clearly chosen to interpret this ambiguity as they see fit. I’ve seen the same item worn as a top by one girl, as a dress by another. I guess these multifunctional garments are ideal in a society where the meaning of ‘modesty’ can vary so greatly from person to person.

So what do I mean when I say that I don’t have enough ‘appropriate’ summer clothing? What implicit rules am I referring to, if this truly is a city where anything goes?

The truth is, of course, that it’s not. One might see all varieties of skin coverage, but this does not necessarily mean that everything is equally accepted. Modernization, and the tendency to associate this development with ‘westernization’, have certainly led to a greater acceptance of more revealing style, and lends girls more freedom to dress themselves like the women they see on satellite television or in French magazines (in fact, this style now shows up in Moroccan magazines, as well). But the ambiguous value that always sticks to the whole notion of ‘modernization’ also colors evaluation of these new trends in fashion. A short skirt means ‘modern’, but for many it also still means ‘loose’, ‘immodest’ – and thus suggests ‘immoral’. In a society where people are often judged by behavior rather than intentions, this can be a dangerous and harmful association.

The reason these styles are worn and seen more and more commonly in Morocco’s larger cities has to do, for one, with the fact that this ambiguity does create space for it (‘ambiguous’ is a step up from ‘not done’, of course). But I also think it has something to do with the fact that judgment seems to be more important for some than it is for others. I don’t mean that some girls simply don’t care about their reputation. What I mean is that I’m getting the impression that some girls have certain buffers to protect them against the harmful effect of social judgment. Perhaps it’s money, perhaps it’s a good education and a respectable job (though these are always bought with money, of course) – but whichever it is, I am starting to get the sense that a certain social gravity, or position, elevates one’s reputation above the harmful effect of someone’s gossip. Though it may, of course, depend on who’s gossiping. I’m reminded of a comment Ilyas made to me, that night that we went to see Amours Voilées. In this film the protagonist gets pregnant out of wedlock, and the movie remains strikingly non-judgmental about the whole affair. Ilyas suggested that this had something to do with the fact that the protagonist was a doctor. This elevated status bought her a certain freedom of action, he explained. He did not elaborate and I retreated into silence as I tried to make sense of this seeming moral relativism.

This greater freedom to experiment with the traditional rules of propriety seems a lot like the same kind of situation. Come to think of it, we see that same kind of relativism every day in the US and the Netherlands. And so I’m left to wonder, what is the logic behind it? Are moral rules ultimately pragmatic, designed only to keep us on the straight and narrow until we ‘make it’ – and do they thus fall away once we do? Are girls more free to dress revealingly because they’ve already ‘made it’ by virtue of their money, education, or profession? Or does this say something about the corrupting effect of such status symbols, the immorality of them? About the corrupting effect of social power, perhaps?

My reputation as a western woman is weighed on an entirely different scale, of course, with an ambiguity all its own. Always already considered as outsiders, western women are not judged by the same standards of propriety as those that apply to Moroccan women. So why not wear whatever I want? I don’t have to worry about being considered ‘loose’ and unfit for marriage. But at the same time, I always already am considered ‘loose’. Created for us by the worst examples of televised western promiscuity, our reputation in some sense always already is that of someone who would never live up to Moroccan standards of propriety. And as much as we’re explicitly not being judged by Moroccan standards, everyone is aware of the fact that we’d never pass if we were.

I feel that wearing spaghetti strap tops ultimately only confirm a reputation that we don’t deserve. I know that my personal choice to cover up just a slight bit more than usual won’t make a dent in the larger reality, but at least I feel like I’m doing my part in promoting some kind of deeper cross-cultural understanding. Also – despite the fact that some Moroccan girls are getting away with ‘new’ styles of clothing – it’s a matter of respect for local mores, to me.

And secretly? I see it as a way to set myself apart from the average tourist. It’s my way of trying to blend in just a little bit more. Of trying to look as though I belong here, walk around here every day, and have accustomed to the surroundings.

* The –i suffix makes a noun into an adjective; ‘Rbati’ thus means something like ‘of Rabat’. I don’t write ‘Rabati’ because the capital city’s name is actually pronounced something like ‘Rrrbat’.
**Yes, you will also see the occasional woman dressed head to toe in black and who leaves only her eyes for the public to see. But this happens very, very rarely.