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…
Showing posts with label Amazigh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amazigh. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Thursday, June 25, 2009
On the Amazigh and the Dark Side of Emancipation
This year, the annual festival Mawazine took over Rabat from May 15 to 23. Mawazine is a big deal – it attracts big international names like Alicia Keys and Kylie Minogue – and my co-workers had been anticipating it for months, but I was to miss most of it due to a scheduled trip back home to the US. Nevertheless, a group of us gathered on the eve of my departure for a free concert at Place Moulay Hassan (better known to locals as Place Pietri, but recently renamed in honor of the now school-age crown prince). The main attraction and primary reason for our attendance was Imetlaâ, a Dutch band of Berber origin. Its members come from the Rif mountains in the north of Morocco, and belong to the growing community of Moroccan-Dutch (incidentally, their website explains that ‘Imetlaâ’ actually means ‘immigrant’ in Tariffit, the language of the Rif). Our group was excited to see them on stage; being Dutch, and some of us sharing this band’s Riffi heritage, we felt a certain connection.
We were not the only ones. About thirty minutes before the concert was scheduled to begin, the square really began to fill up. Groups of young men, mostly, boisterously excited and energetic. Some had come bearing material expressions of their Amazigh-identity: I saw a boy with a knit cap in the colors of the Amazigh flag, and other subtle displays of the Amazigh sign on t-shirts, hands, and keychains.
The band was received with enthusiastic applause and cheers. The crowd did not simply sing along with catchy choruses; they knew every single word of every single song, and bellowed them out with such force and energy that the sound seemed to take up actual physical space. It reverberated through me – not just the weight of the sound, but the sense of connection that was being created and expressed here, this positive energy of recognition.
Here and there groups of boys, their arms around each other, draped an Amazigh flag over their shoulders and swayed it along with the rhythm of the music. I remember noticing this, and realizing that the only place I had ever seen this flag before was on the internet. I remembered not even knowing there was an Amazigh flag until a few months ago.
My thoughts were rudely disturbed by small groups of policemen who aggressively pushed their way through the crowd and, equally aggressively, dragged away not only those flags, but the boys who were waving it. This scene happened not just once, but repeated itself with two more groups. The Riffi boys I was with yelled at the proceedings with outrage and disappeared to follow the police with their prey. This scared me. I am overly sensitive sometimes; this aggressive police action truly and physically shocked me. I didn’t want to know how the offending boys were going to be treated, and I was afraid that any indication of protest on the part of my friends would subject them to a similar fate. I became afraid of the police that stood all around the square, and I became afraid of the crowd closing in on me. Luckily, my friends returned soon enough, and we resumed listening and singing along to the music, almost as though nothing had happened.
It’s strange, the way this works. An Amazigh band, singing in Tariffit, is allowed on stage in the middle of Rabat, as part of a festival sponsored by his Majesty the King himself. In a sense, you could say that this music is thereby not only tolerated but even promoted – by raising it up here on a stage, literally putting it in the spotlight, amplifying it with huge subwoofers, gathering a crowd of listeners – and all this in the middle of the political capital, mere steps away from the parliament and royal palace. All this – yet a single show of that blue, green, and yellow flag elicits this kind of hostile suppression. It seemed so bizarre to me.
But in fact it makes perfectly clear where the government stands on the Amazigh. The King has decided to tolerate, even help, the Imazighen develop and express their cultural heritage. There is a special institute devoted entirely to the standardization of Berber languages and the promotion of their expression through literature, music, fashion, and theater. But any political expression of identity is still considered a threat to the absolute power of the king and his government. The Amazigh identity has been reduced, in other words, to a non-threatening folkloric culture. From Hassan II, where it was not ethnicity but cultural expression that counted, we’ve graduated to a new situation, where it’s neither ethnicity nor cultural expression, but political activism that crosses the line.
The King’s overt efforts at the promotion of Berber culture help obscure the persistent suppression of Berber political freedom. This is the issue that so many have with the IRCAM: they see it as the King’s cover. As Farid says, the institute’s name says it all: it’s the royal institute for Amazigh culture. Whenever anyone voices protest over discrimination or suppression, the King is able to point to the institute he built and basically say, “but what are you talking about? I’m helping them!” And thus, essentially, they argue the IRCAM does more harm than good.
Apart from the police aggression I witnessed and the prohibition on displays of the Amazigh flag that it enforced, there are other clear signs of continued oppression. To name one: the prohibition on Amazigh names. Simply put, Moroccan authorities refuse to register any Amazigh names on official documentation such as passports, birth certificates, and marriage licenses.* The rationale behind this, apparently, is that individuals’ names must be ‘Moroccan’ in origin. Although one may wonder what could be more Moroccan than an Amazigh name, the government has here clearly chosen to interpret ‘Moroccan’ in a very particular way – and thus uses this simple legislation as yet another way to reinforce a particular, Islamic-Arabic national identity.
Simply put, despite the IRCAM’s work (and I’m convinced the IRCAM people have nothing but the best intentions) the Imazighen are still disenfranchised politically – whether it be due to direct measures of discrimination or a simple lack of involvement and lack of access to the political machine (don’t forget that Berbers are overrepresented in those marginal regions of Morocco that are so far removed from the goings-on at the center).
We could, of course, wonder why the Moroccan government chooses this particular route to national unity. Because it’s worth questioning whether forceful suppression of alternative ideas is really the most effective way to do it. It’s clear that Morocco wishes to base this unity on a shared political investment in a single government – and a shared religion. The fact that Morocco takes such pride in its cultural diversity (The Berbers! The Jews! The Subsaharan Africans! And the Arabs!) indicates that they’re not necessarily banking on any kind of ethnic or even cultural unity. This seems so progressive – yet they choose such a non-progressive way of building that political unity. Is it too idealistic to think that political agreement and universal investment in the national political system (and in the King, of course) is much easier to obtain if you give everyone a freedom of political expression within that system?
*This legislation has been extended to all embassies abroad – and so even Berbers in the Netherlands now protest the limits on parents’ choices in naming their children.
Monday, June 22, 2009
On the Amazigh, and Alternative Takes on History
Yesterday afternoon, Farid and I got in the car and headed to the beach for a lazy afternoon in the sun. As we whizzed south on the coastal road to Casablanca, I decided now was as good a time as any to ask Farid for clarification on a matter that had begun to confuse me a little.
“When did the suppression of the Berbers really begin?” I broached. “Was it a result of colonialism, or did it happen before then, too?”
Farid looked gravely at the road. With frustration in his voice, he responded. “They’ve always been suppressed. From the moment those Arab invaders conquered Morocco, they’ve thought of themselves as superior to the Berbers.”
I expected this answer. We were getting to the source of my confusion, and I pressed on.
“But what about those dynasties, the ones people call the ‘Berber’ dynasties? The Almoravids, the Almohads, the Merinids? If they were Berber, how was there suppression?”
Farid shook his head. “You don’t think Berbers were actually the ones in power, do you?” He asked, rhetorically. “That was just so that the Arabs could legitimize their dominance with the local people. It was always Arabs who had the real power. It was just a façade.”
I pondered this statement. This perspective is not one you’ll find in any history book, and it was new to me. I sank back in my seat, looked out at the beach-going traffic around us, and smiled at this new twist, or plot-thickening, in the saga of Arab-Berber relations.
***
History is written by the victors of time. Although it’s tempting to think of history books as factual accounts of the-way-things-were, there are multiple sides to every story – and it’s always the people who come out on top that get to stamp their version as ‘truth’ and send it on into posterity as ‘historical’ account.
Behind every official story, then, lurks an oppositional account. There is an unofficial alternative to every official recollection – and Morocco is no different.
Officially, Moroccan history goes something like this (and I quote, from a few trusty history books). About 13 centuries ago (this would put us in between the 7th and 8th centuries AD), Arab Muslims invade and conquer the Maghreb. The land they find had always been ruled by dispersed Berber kingdoms. No one knows exactly where these indigenous peoples originated, but they’ve populated all of North Africa as long as there have been written records to document their presence.* They speak a variety of related languages (in Morocco, these are Tariffit in the north, Tamazight in the Atlas, and Tashelhit in the south) that belong to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages.** They’ve dealt with invasions before – Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines – but they’ve always maintained a lifestyle characterized by a tribal social organization and animist religious worship. Until they are introduced to Islam, that is: receiving the Arabs as liberators from Byzantine oppression, most willingly convert to this new religion.
With the conversion of Berbers to Islam comes the unification of Morocco under centralized rule (and just in case you’re interested, this unified territory included the Western Sahara). Idriss I and his son Idriss II, Arab refugees who claim descent from the Prophet Mohammed, establish the first of a series of dynasties, its capital in the new city of Fes.
Attesting to the monumental importance of this moment in history are the banners that line the broad boulevards of Fes’ Ville Nouvelle these days. Underneath a green star and the number twelve, they read “douze siècles de la vie d’un Royaume” – ‘twelve centuries of the life of a kingdom’. These banners (and the festivities they accompanied) purport to mark the 1200th anniversary of this city’s existence, but in fact, Fes only figures as a synecdoche, if you will: while focusing on Fes, what’s really being celebrated here is the 1200th anniversary of a (relatively) unified, Islamic Morocco. The banner suggests as much in referring to a “royaume” rather than a city, and a little math confirms the truth. Fes was founded in 789 AD; the 1200th anniversary of this event should have been celebrated in 1989. What happened 1200 years before 2008 (in 808 to be exact), was Idriss II’s proclamation of Fes as capital of his new dynasty.
A number of other great ‘Berber’ dynasties follow the example set by the Idrissids, each combining a renewed religious orthodoxy with novel political opportunism. All dynasties hail from Morocco’s south: there are the Almoravids, the Almohads, and then the Merinids. Morocco lives through the European renaissance under Saadian rule, until they surrender power to the Alaouites, a family of Arab descent (and of Prophetic descent, no less) that still rules Morocco today.
This, then, is the official version. But what history books describe as civilization and unification through the combined forces of Arabization and Islamization, Berbers see as yet another episode in a long history of occupation and suppression. According to their alternative version of events, yet another civilization was forcefully imposed upon the Imazighen (this is how the Berber peoples refer to themselves. It is the plural of Amazigh, which means something like ‘free person’). Sure, some converted ‘willingly’ – it was either that or suffer great deprivation and disenfranchisement.*** Sure, there were ‘Berber dynasties’ – but the use of the term ‘Berber’ here more likely suggests Arabs’ efforts to legitimize their own rule in the eyes of the native people they were up against, than any real power in the hands of Amazigh tribes. And that’s a version I hadn’t heard before.
What I had heard before was this – this has made it into recent (post-Hassan II) accounts of history: after French authorities played out Arabs against Berbers in a divide-and-rule approach to colonialism, the Imazighen suffered considerable repression in the first few decades of postcolonial government. In the interest of both maintaining a national sense of unity, and of aligning that unity with the pan-Arab ideologies popular at the time in the Middle East, king Hassan II made life difficult for Berbers. Expressions of Berber identity were suppressed (including their languages), any political protest was forcefully squashed, and the accuracy of Morocco’s ‘official’ history was re-emphasized.
The new king, Mohammed VI, ameliorated the situation. He confessed to having a Berber mother (yes – for all his suppression of Berber identity, Hassan II nevertheless married a Berber woman. I think this may suggest that the issue was not ethnic. That is – the problematic Berber identity was not ethnically defined for Hassan II, but culturally and politically. Meaning that any Berber who identifies with Arab language and culture is fine), and proclaimed the establishment of a royal institute for Amazigh culture.
This is the IRCAM, the “Institut Royale de la Culture Amazighe.” Headquartered here in Rabat, this institute pursues the development and standardization of Berber languages (what with suppression, its development had been stalled in the pre-industrial age. This means Berber languages have quite some catching up to do with the pace of modern life…), the development of a Berber script (with widespread illiteracy and the suppression of these languages, Berber became a strictly oral language. The IRCAM chose tifinagh, an ancient script, as Berber alphabet), as well as the promotion of Berber cultural expressions – music, literature, theatre, and so on.
The king, in other words, is pursuing the emancipation of Berber culture. This is good, right? You would think it sounds great, and noble, and regal. I did. Until I arrived in Morocco this past September and was exposed to the alternative perspective by Berber friends. For more on this, stay tuned for the next post…
* These documents go back to as early as the predynastic Egyptian kingdoms.
** This clan also includes the semitic languages (to which both Arabic and Hebrew belong), as well as Ethiopian. All this means Berber is about as related to Arabic as French is to Russian.
*** Yet I don’t think any Berber today would reject Islam as the religion of an occupying force. I think that to them, Islam is as much the one true faith as it is to the average Arab.
“When did the suppression of the Berbers really begin?” I broached. “Was it a result of colonialism, or did it happen before then, too?”
Farid looked gravely at the road. With frustration in his voice, he responded. “They’ve always been suppressed. From the moment those Arab invaders conquered Morocco, they’ve thought of themselves as superior to the Berbers.”
I expected this answer. We were getting to the source of my confusion, and I pressed on.
“But what about those dynasties, the ones people call the ‘Berber’ dynasties? The Almoravids, the Almohads, the Merinids? If they were Berber, how was there suppression?”
Farid shook his head. “You don’t think Berbers were actually the ones in power, do you?” He asked, rhetorically. “That was just so that the Arabs could legitimize their dominance with the local people. It was always Arabs who had the real power. It was just a façade.”
I pondered this statement. This perspective is not one you’ll find in any history book, and it was new to me. I sank back in my seat, looked out at the beach-going traffic around us, and smiled at this new twist, or plot-thickening, in the saga of Arab-Berber relations.
***
History is written by the victors of time. Although it’s tempting to think of history books as factual accounts of the-way-things-were, there are multiple sides to every story – and it’s always the people who come out on top that get to stamp their version as ‘truth’ and send it on into posterity as ‘historical’ account.
Behind every official story, then, lurks an oppositional account. There is an unofficial alternative to every official recollection – and Morocco is no different.
Officially, Moroccan history goes something like this (and I quote, from a few trusty history books). About 13 centuries ago (this would put us in between the 7th and 8th centuries AD), Arab Muslims invade and conquer the Maghreb. The land they find had always been ruled by dispersed Berber kingdoms. No one knows exactly where these indigenous peoples originated, but they’ve populated all of North Africa as long as there have been written records to document their presence.* They speak a variety of related languages (in Morocco, these are Tariffit in the north, Tamazight in the Atlas, and Tashelhit in the south) that belong to the Afro-Asiatic family of languages.** They’ve dealt with invasions before – Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines – but they’ve always maintained a lifestyle characterized by a tribal social organization and animist religious worship. Until they are introduced to Islam, that is: receiving the Arabs as liberators from Byzantine oppression, most willingly convert to this new religion.
With the conversion of Berbers to Islam comes the unification of Morocco under centralized rule (and just in case you’re interested, this unified territory included the Western Sahara). Idriss I and his son Idriss II, Arab refugees who claim descent from the Prophet Mohammed, establish the first of a series of dynasties, its capital in the new city of Fes.
Attesting to the monumental importance of this moment in history are the banners that line the broad boulevards of Fes’ Ville Nouvelle these days. Underneath a green star and the number twelve, they read “douze siècles de la vie d’un Royaume” – ‘twelve centuries of the life of a kingdom’. These banners (and the festivities they accompanied) purport to mark the 1200th anniversary of this city’s existence, but in fact, Fes only figures as a synecdoche, if you will: while focusing on Fes, what’s really being celebrated here is the 1200th anniversary of a (relatively) unified, Islamic Morocco. The banner suggests as much in referring to a “royaume” rather than a city, and a little math confirms the truth. Fes was founded in 789 AD; the 1200th anniversary of this event should have been celebrated in 1989. What happened 1200 years before 2008 (in 808 to be exact), was Idriss II’s proclamation of Fes as capital of his new dynasty.
A number of other great ‘Berber’ dynasties follow the example set by the Idrissids, each combining a renewed religious orthodoxy with novel political opportunism. All dynasties hail from Morocco’s south: there are the Almoravids, the Almohads, and then the Merinids. Morocco lives through the European renaissance under Saadian rule, until they surrender power to the Alaouites, a family of Arab descent (and of Prophetic descent, no less) that still rules Morocco today.
This, then, is the official version. But what history books describe as civilization and unification through the combined forces of Arabization and Islamization, Berbers see as yet another episode in a long history of occupation and suppression. According to their alternative version of events, yet another civilization was forcefully imposed upon the Imazighen (this is how the Berber peoples refer to themselves. It is the plural of Amazigh, which means something like ‘free person’). Sure, some converted ‘willingly’ – it was either that or suffer great deprivation and disenfranchisement.*** Sure, there were ‘Berber dynasties’ – but the use of the term ‘Berber’ here more likely suggests Arabs’ efforts to legitimize their own rule in the eyes of the native people they were up against, than any real power in the hands of Amazigh tribes. And that’s a version I hadn’t heard before.
What I had heard before was this – this has made it into recent (post-Hassan II) accounts of history: after French authorities played out Arabs against Berbers in a divide-and-rule approach to colonialism, the Imazighen suffered considerable repression in the first few decades of postcolonial government. In the interest of both maintaining a national sense of unity, and of aligning that unity with the pan-Arab ideologies popular at the time in the Middle East, king Hassan II made life difficult for Berbers. Expressions of Berber identity were suppressed (including their languages), any political protest was forcefully squashed, and the accuracy of Morocco’s ‘official’ history was re-emphasized.
The new king, Mohammed VI, ameliorated the situation. He confessed to having a Berber mother (yes – for all his suppression of Berber identity, Hassan II nevertheless married a Berber woman. I think this may suggest that the issue was not ethnic. That is – the problematic Berber identity was not ethnically defined for Hassan II, but culturally and politically. Meaning that any Berber who identifies with Arab language and culture is fine), and proclaimed the establishment of a royal institute for Amazigh culture.
This is the IRCAM, the “Institut Royale de la Culture Amazighe.” Headquartered here in Rabat, this institute pursues the development and standardization of Berber languages (what with suppression, its development had been stalled in the pre-industrial age. This means Berber languages have quite some catching up to do with the pace of modern life…), the development of a Berber script (with widespread illiteracy and the suppression of these languages, Berber became a strictly oral language. The IRCAM chose tifinagh, an ancient script, as Berber alphabet), as well as the promotion of Berber cultural expressions – music, literature, theatre, and so on.
The king, in other words, is pursuing the emancipation of Berber culture. This is good, right? You would think it sounds great, and noble, and regal. I did. Until I arrived in Morocco this past September and was exposed to the alternative perspective by Berber friends. For more on this, stay tuned for the next post…
* These documents go back to as early as the predynastic Egyptian kingdoms.
** This clan also includes the semitic languages (to which both Arabic and Hebrew belong), as well as Ethiopian. All this means Berber is about as related to Arabic as French is to Russian.
*** Yet I don’t think any Berber today would reject Islam as the religion of an occupying force. I think that to them, Islam is as much the one true faith as it is to the average Arab.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Margin versus Center - Part 1
One of the main reasons for my endless intrigue with Morocco is a fundamental sense of duality that colors its society, history, and culture. As I familiarized myself with the country through visits and readings, this duality began to stand out as though it had been written in red ink, and it became the main theme in the background research paper I wrote about the place of mental healthcare in Morocco. A few days ago in class, Ilyas characterized this duality in a way I had not come across before, but which perfectly captures its gist: he called it a contradistinction between center (“l-markez”) and margin (“l-hamish”).
This juxtaposition between center and margin truly runs through all dimensions of this country’s existence, and in a sense it is the connecting thread that binds them all together into a single nation. The most straightforward distinction – and very likely the basis of all other juxtapositions – can be identified geographically. On the one hand there is the arable, temperate Morocco of the coastline and valley; on the other, there are Morocco’s vast mountainous and/or desert regions – border zones that offer natural protection to the valley, but themselves have little to offer but the cruelty of nature. This geographical opposition has engendered a duality in a variety of other dimensions – such as a fairly deep socio-economic divide. Much more inhabitable and fertile, all major cities and most of the country’s infrastructure were built in the valley. The valley has thus always functioned as the center of Morocco’s economic production and prosperity, while rough rural areas contributed relatively little – and had even less. Geography even led to a political divide: Dynastic power always emanated from and focused on the coastal valley, where good infrastructure facilitated the extension of centralized rule throughout the region. The geographical margins, on the other hand, were often simply too rough and unreachable for the sultan’s rule and were run mostly by tribal convention. And finally, geography led to an ethnic and linguistic divide – between the powerful Arabs who controlled the cities, and the proud tribal Berbers, who preferred to isolate themselves in the margins, safe from centralized power.
The French exploited this duality in their colonial policy, hoping thus to rip Morocco apart – to divide and conquer. Appealing to the Berbers’ lack of loyalty to Arab power, they emphasized the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences between them, aiming to turn Berber tribes into French allies. What finally thwarted these efforts was sultan Mohammed V’s appeal to religion. In many ways, religion can be considered the single unifying factor in Morocco.* Since the 17th century, the center and margin – the Arab valley and its tribal hinterlands – have stayed together despite the inability of the sultanate to extend its political power to the mountains and deserts, by grace of the ruling dynasty’s status as Charifs (descendants of the prophet Mohammed).** Where the sultan’s political power could not reach, his status as religious leader was always respected. And in those areas where political power was weak, it was often the Sufi brotherhoods who came to play a role of political leadership.
Religion is still a unifying factor. It remains a very important aspect of Moroccan identity – something one may not ordinarily expect from a country where about 99% of the population is of the same faith. Nevertheless, a sense of duality still exists. Geographically, economically, politically, and culturally, there is a center – the coastal valley, its major cities, people with education and means – and a margin – the mountains and deserts, the poor and disenfranchised; those who simply live at too great a distance (either geographically or socio-economically) to either benefit from government services or influence them in any way.
Another duality that has become prominent since the Protectorate period is one of language. The French have in a way greatly complicated and confused the linguistic situation in Morocco; and the way in which king Hassan II’s postcolonial regime dealt with what the French had left behind mostly deepened this confusion. There remains a distinction between Arabic (center) and Amazighi (a term used to denote Berber languages as a collective), as well as a distinction within Arabic between Darija (colloquial Moroccan Arabic) and Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic). Despite the fact that the former is by far much more widely used, it nevertheless counts as marginal – because it is unofficial, not real, ‘lawless’, ‘polluted’. Fusha on the other hand is the language of literacy, of education, of system, and thus of power – as such, it is very much the ‘center’.*** This is a problem, because it pushes all those who have not enjoyed enough education to have command of Fusha even further into the socio-economic margin.
A bigger problem, however, is the divide that has developed between French and Arabic. Upon independence, Morocco was left with a societal infrastructure that functioned mostly in French. This language was kept in place until 1973, when king Hassan II announced a project of ‘Arabization’ (“ta‘rib”), in the hopes of unifying the country and affirming its Arab heritage. Arabization entailed replacement of French with Arabic in all public- and government institutions. But this did not occasion the huge transformation that Hassan II may have envisioned when he came up with this plan. Those with means actually spoke very little Arabic, having lived in Francophone circles for most of their lives. They had enough money to send their children to Francophone schools abroad, and enough power to resist Arabization in their Moroccan realms of functioning – higher education, and government. French thus remains dominant in all day-to-day government affairs, and all university departments teach in French – except the departments of Arabic, Islamic studies, and some areas of law.
This means that a linguistic divide appears, further distancing the average person from these institutions of power. Anyone of average or little means attends Morocco’s public schools, where Arabization has taken effect.**** They thus enjoy their education in a combination of Fusha and Darija, learning French as a foreign language much like a student in the Netherlands would.***** Looking through the entrance requirements for Mohammed V University as listed on its website [find link], I did not see a French language-examination listed anywhere. I therefore don’t think public school graduates are categorically barred from a university education in any way, but the fact that this education takes place in French makes it that much more difficult for someone coming from a public school to succeed in higher education.
The divide between Arabic and French also entails a communicative barrier between government and population. Indeed, there seems to be very little communication of government affairs to the public (Ilyas also mentioned in passing that Moroccan politicians are appalling public speakers). The king, supreme political power, speaks fluent Arabic, French, and apparently even Spanish (I often wonder, does he speak Darija at home with his wife and children?). He is highly visible, but hardly ever speaks to his people. Each night, nearly half of the news broadcast is devoted to reports of Mohammed VI at yet another inauguration of some development project. We are treated to shots of the king looking, with a blank expression, at posters explaining the project at hand; of the king walking down a red carpet with enthusiastic crowds cheering in the background; or of the king making his way down a row of officials, each of which eagerly reaches down to kiss the king’s hand (it always strikes me how he seems to forcefully pull his hand back each time, as if he’s disgusted by the gesture).
Newspapers report on the king’s speeches – most recently at the opening of the new parliamentary session a few weeks ago. But apart from these rehearsed and ceremonial occasions, the king never speaks to his public. In fact, Telquel (the Francophone Moroccan equivalent of Time magazine) published an article two weeks ago on the fact that the king has, as of yet, never granted a single interview to a Moroccan journalist. He has been interviewed for Time, le Figaro, El Pais, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat – but never for a Moroccan publication. Even the Moroccan journalist who had been part of the Ash-Sharq al-Awsat team was subtly kept back as his Saudi colleague was invited to carry out the interview.
Arabization had been meant to unify the country (though I wonder if socio-economic unification was ever part of the motivation; political unification seems to have been more important), but ultimately only deepened the already existing divide between center and margin, adding a new dimension to its influence over Morocco. Why is it that not more effort is made to bring the two sides together, to integrate margin with center? Are the mountains and deserts truly too impenetrable to ever establish any kind of order and system there? Does the center lack means to undertake this – admittedly huge – endeavor? Or is it something else?
I venture to suggest – without making any definitive claims about why the margin remains marginal – that there is a certain dimension of Freudian psychology involved. Stay tuned for the next post.
* Even though here, too, a duality could be identified – between orthodox and heterodox practices, for instance. This, however, may be more aptly characterized as a distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘culture’.
** This is the Alaouite dynasty, which has been in power continuously since the 1600s (despite colonialism; the French technically left the sultan in power), and of which Mohammed VI is the latest ruler. The title of ‘sultan’ was replaced by that of ‘king’ after independence.
*** Because the ‘center’ not only denotes that which has the most power or dominance. It also represents the ideal, the country’s view of itself as it should, ideally, be. But I want to save that idea for the next post.
**** Public schools in Morocco are free – an admirable gesture from the government to offer education to anyone (anyone for whom a school is actually within reachable distance, and who can miss their children’s extra labor force at home). Nevertheless, public education does not get you very far – its quality is sub-par in comparison with the expensive, francophone private institutions attended by those with money.
***** Although it may be unfair to compare these two countries. Moroccans are exposed to French much more intensively than most Dutch high school students are. I asked Amma what languages are spoken in her high school classes, and she mentioned that French pops up outside of her French classes quite frequently, especially in her science classes. This is not surprising, perhaps – if all science at university and research level communicates in French, Darija equivalents for many of its technical terms may simply not exist.
This juxtaposition between center and margin truly runs through all dimensions of this country’s existence, and in a sense it is the connecting thread that binds them all together into a single nation. The most straightforward distinction – and very likely the basis of all other juxtapositions – can be identified geographically. On the one hand there is the arable, temperate Morocco of the coastline and valley; on the other, there are Morocco’s vast mountainous and/or desert regions – border zones that offer natural protection to the valley, but themselves have little to offer but the cruelty of nature. This geographical opposition has engendered a duality in a variety of other dimensions – such as a fairly deep socio-economic divide. Much more inhabitable and fertile, all major cities and most of the country’s infrastructure were built in the valley. The valley has thus always functioned as the center of Morocco’s economic production and prosperity, while rough rural areas contributed relatively little – and had even less. Geography even led to a political divide: Dynastic power always emanated from and focused on the coastal valley, where good infrastructure facilitated the extension of centralized rule throughout the region. The geographical margins, on the other hand, were often simply too rough and unreachable for the sultan’s rule and were run mostly by tribal convention. And finally, geography led to an ethnic and linguistic divide – between the powerful Arabs who controlled the cities, and the proud tribal Berbers, who preferred to isolate themselves in the margins, safe from centralized power.
The French exploited this duality in their colonial policy, hoping thus to rip Morocco apart – to divide and conquer. Appealing to the Berbers’ lack of loyalty to Arab power, they emphasized the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural differences between them, aiming to turn Berber tribes into French allies. What finally thwarted these efforts was sultan Mohammed V’s appeal to religion. In many ways, religion can be considered the single unifying factor in Morocco.* Since the 17th century, the center and margin – the Arab valley and its tribal hinterlands – have stayed together despite the inability of the sultanate to extend its political power to the mountains and deserts, by grace of the ruling dynasty’s status as Charifs (descendants of the prophet Mohammed).** Where the sultan’s political power could not reach, his status as religious leader was always respected. And in those areas where political power was weak, it was often the Sufi brotherhoods who came to play a role of political leadership.
Religion is still a unifying factor. It remains a very important aspect of Moroccan identity – something one may not ordinarily expect from a country where about 99% of the population is of the same faith. Nevertheless, a sense of duality still exists. Geographically, economically, politically, and culturally, there is a center – the coastal valley, its major cities, people with education and means – and a margin – the mountains and deserts, the poor and disenfranchised; those who simply live at too great a distance (either geographically or socio-economically) to either benefit from government services or influence them in any way.
Another duality that has become prominent since the Protectorate period is one of language. The French have in a way greatly complicated and confused the linguistic situation in Morocco; and the way in which king Hassan II’s postcolonial regime dealt with what the French had left behind mostly deepened this confusion. There remains a distinction between Arabic (center) and Amazighi (a term used to denote Berber languages as a collective), as well as a distinction within Arabic between Darija (colloquial Moroccan Arabic) and Fusha (Modern Standard Arabic). Despite the fact that the former is by far much more widely used, it nevertheless counts as marginal – because it is unofficial, not real, ‘lawless’, ‘polluted’. Fusha on the other hand is the language of literacy, of education, of system, and thus of power – as such, it is very much the ‘center’.*** This is a problem, because it pushes all those who have not enjoyed enough education to have command of Fusha even further into the socio-economic margin.
A bigger problem, however, is the divide that has developed between French and Arabic. Upon independence, Morocco was left with a societal infrastructure that functioned mostly in French. This language was kept in place until 1973, when king Hassan II announced a project of ‘Arabization’ (“ta‘rib”), in the hopes of unifying the country and affirming its Arab heritage. Arabization entailed replacement of French with Arabic in all public- and government institutions. But this did not occasion the huge transformation that Hassan II may have envisioned when he came up with this plan. Those with means actually spoke very little Arabic, having lived in Francophone circles for most of their lives. They had enough money to send their children to Francophone schools abroad, and enough power to resist Arabization in their Moroccan realms of functioning – higher education, and government. French thus remains dominant in all day-to-day government affairs, and all university departments teach in French – except the departments of Arabic, Islamic studies, and some areas of law.
This means that a linguistic divide appears, further distancing the average person from these institutions of power. Anyone of average or little means attends Morocco’s public schools, where Arabization has taken effect.**** They thus enjoy their education in a combination of Fusha and Darija, learning French as a foreign language much like a student in the Netherlands would.***** Looking through the entrance requirements for Mohammed V University as listed on its website [find link], I did not see a French language-examination listed anywhere. I therefore don’t think public school graduates are categorically barred from a university education in any way, but the fact that this education takes place in French makes it that much more difficult for someone coming from a public school to succeed in higher education.
The divide between Arabic and French also entails a communicative barrier between government and population. Indeed, there seems to be very little communication of government affairs to the public (Ilyas also mentioned in passing that Moroccan politicians are appalling public speakers). The king, supreme political power, speaks fluent Arabic, French, and apparently even Spanish (I often wonder, does he speak Darija at home with his wife and children?). He is highly visible, but hardly ever speaks to his people. Each night, nearly half of the news broadcast is devoted to reports of Mohammed VI at yet another inauguration of some development project. We are treated to shots of the king looking, with a blank expression, at posters explaining the project at hand; of the king walking down a red carpet with enthusiastic crowds cheering in the background; or of the king making his way down a row of officials, each of which eagerly reaches down to kiss the king’s hand (it always strikes me how he seems to forcefully pull his hand back each time, as if he’s disgusted by the gesture).
Newspapers report on the king’s speeches – most recently at the opening of the new parliamentary session a few weeks ago. But apart from these rehearsed and ceremonial occasions, the king never speaks to his public. In fact, Telquel (the Francophone Moroccan equivalent of Time magazine) published an article two weeks ago on the fact that the king has, as of yet, never granted a single interview to a Moroccan journalist. He has been interviewed for Time, le Figaro, El Pais, Ash-Sharq al-Awsat – but never for a Moroccan publication. Even the Moroccan journalist who had been part of the Ash-Sharq al-Awsat team was subtly kept back as his Saudi colleague was invited to carry out the interview.
Arabization had been meant to unify the country (though I wonder if socio-economic unification was ever part of the motivation; political unification seems to have been more important), but ultimately only deepened the already existing divide between center and margin, adding a new dimension to its influence over Morocco. Why is it that not more effort is made to bring the two sides together, to integrate margin with center? Are the mountains and deserts truly too impenetrable to ever establish any kind of order and system there? Does the center lack means to undertake this – admittedly huge – endeavor? Or is it something else?
I venture to suggest – without making any definitive claims about why the margin remains marginal – that there is a certain dimension of Freudian psychology involved. Stay tuned for the next post.
* Even though here, too, a duality could be identified – between orthodox and heterodox practices, for instance. This, however, may be more aptly characterized as a distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘culture’.
** This is the Alaouite dynasty, which has been in power continuously since the 1600s (despite colonialism; the French technically left the sultan in power), and of which Mohammed VI is the latest ruler. The title of ‘sultan’ was replaced by that of ‘king’ after independence.
*** Because the ‘center’ not only denotes that which has the most power or dominance. It also represents the ideal, the country’s view of itself as it should, ideally, be. But I want to save that idea for the next post.
**** Public schools in Morocco are free – an admirable gesture from the government to offer education to anyone (anyone for whom a school is actually within reachable distance, and who can miss their children’s extra labor force at home). Nevertheless, public education does not get you very far – its quality is sub-par in comparison with the expensive, francophone private institutions attended by those with money.
***** Although it may be unfair to compare these two countries. Moroccans are exposed to French much more intensively than most Dutch high school students are. I asked Amma what languages are spoken in her high school classes, and she mentioned that French pops up outside of her French classes quite frequently, especially in her science classes. This is not surprising, perhaps – if all science at university and research level communicates in French, Darija equivalents for many of its technical terms may simply not exist.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)