Knowledge and Education

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.

Men Are from Mars, Women are from Venus

Most mornings at the NIMAR start slowly. We officially open at eight, but we usually spend the first hour of the day circled around a table, chatting over tea and breakfast. We discuss our weekends, comment on what’s playing on the television in the background, and allow for the occasional preliminary discussion of work-related goings-on. It’s a pleasant way to ease into the day, and a good use of an hour at which there is little else to do. We open this early to stay on track with the Dutch institutional world, which lives an hour ahead of us. In Morocco, however, no self-respecting employee, or NIMAR student, is ready for business until at least 9 am.

This past Monday, as we did a post-game evaluation of my birthday party (which had taken place on the preceding Saturday), the conversation touched on the risks of making a late-night solo drive back home – and from there devolved quickly into thorny territory: the harassment of women on Moroccan streets.

Cynthia and Chaima opened, claiming a lonely street in the dark of night is no place for a woman alone – what with rapists, thieves, and other figures of the underworld.

“Well, what about men?” Farid retorted. “Men are the ones who get robbed, conned, and deceived. People are actually nice to women – you get your bags carried for you, a seat given away to you on the bus, and there’s always a hand ready to help you change your tire.”

Chaima dismissively shook her head. “Oh, Farid,” she chuckled, “you have no idea what it’s like for women.”

Cynthia bristled in agreement. “What?” She demanded of Farid. “How can you say that? Women are constantly treated with disrespect on the street!” Confronted by a skeptical expression on Farid’s face, she then launched into a description of the verbal and tactile varieties of unwanted attention that women suffer daily when out and about, trying to mind their own business. To add dramatic force to her illustrations, she got up from her chair and turned courtyard into stage, enlisting Chaima as co-star in her performance. The two put on their best macho faces, their eyes expressing an exaggerated form of the demeaning lust they attribute to the men they were imitating, and swaggered daringly past each other, Chaima grazing Cynthia’s posterior while the latter stage-whispered disrespectful gibberish into the former’s ear.

“Nine out of ten men,” Cynthia emphasized, shooting meaningful glances in Farid’s direction. “And by the time the tenth guy walks by, I’m about ready to punch him in the face.”

His skeptical expression unchanged, Farid shrugged and lit up a cigarette. “It’s all in your head,” he muttered.

This set off a trigger with the lot of us. Say what? Claiming that we’ve somehow conjured up this constant stream of verbal harassment in our collective mind is like saying that there is no glass ceiling for women, or that men are just naturally better at math.

We icily asked him to elaborate, our swords hanging in the sky, ready to fall with a vengeance when he gave us what could only be the wrong answer. Farid argued first that we’d be lost without the attention. He cited a survey that he personally conducted among his female students: “Nine out of ten said they’d feel depressed if they were ignored on the street,” he reported in subtle reference to Cynthia’s earlier statistic.

We protested that this is no surprise in a society where women hardly ever receive positive reinforcement on other aspects of their being. Moroccan women are raised to be demure and modest; if street comments about their appearance are the only source of compliments they have, no wonder they’d miss them in their absence! But, we assured Farid, no self-respecting, confident woman would prefer unsolicited attention to the freedom of public anonymity. Unfazed, Farid pressed on, introducing his second argument. He reminded us that women receive a lot of preferential treatment in return for the occasional offensive comment. We scoffed, but he proceeded to his concluding argument: we bring this attention upon ourselves by not talking back.

I’d been relatively quiet before, observing the back and forth with curiosity as I tried to theorize what made the various participants in this discussion say the things they said and feel the way they felt. But I felt personally addressed by this last argument, and I stepped in.

“Talking back doesn’t work!” I exclaimed, a bit of this morning’s annoyance with the appreciative soldiers I encountered on my walk to work leaking out. “All it does is make them laugh! Hearing me speak Arabic does nothing but egg them on.”

“Or it makes them mad and makes the harassment even worse,” Chaima added. Cynthia and I nodded eagerly. “Yeah,” we contributed, “and when you react by yelling, they accuse you of crossing the boundaries of propriety!”

Farid stuck to his argument, though, insisting that an angry response is the key to solving this issue. “It’s a vicious cycle,” I offered, trying to be the mediator. A theory began to develop in my head, but I wasn’t ready to put it into words yet, and so I kept it at that. “Women allow this kind of attention to happen by remaining mute, which allows men to keep it up. In turn, the sense of endlessness with men’s attention makes women feel as though there’s no use in protesting.”
We got up, cleared the table and put our dirty teacups by the sink without having reached an agreement.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged by any woman (both foreign and native) who has spent a day on Moroccan streets, that one cannot venture outside without eliciting at least a comment from at least seventy percent of the men one passes by. You learn to drown it out (though the occasional butt-graze is impossible, ever, to ignore, and some days are certainly worse than others), but the principle of the matter is offensive. This primal need that men seem to feel, to comment on any and all female figures within their sight, implies a perception of women as not-quite-real, and as not-quite-human.* It is, in all honesty, a very frustrating kind of objectification. But not only that; it is offensive, on a deeper level, that men seem so completely unashamed of their behavior – that society seems to accept this kind of uncivilized comportment.

If we are all so bothered by the fact that we cannot anonymously walk alone outside – by the fact that we will never be able to sit down on a park bench to read a book in peace, to stop outside a shop window and ogle the shoes on sale, or to wait on a street corner for a friend without eliciting a whole lot of unwanted attention – what can we do to make it stop?

In order to answer that question, I think we first need to answer another one: what makes it happen in the first place? How did this become such a commonplace public form of male-female interaction, and what motivates men to address women in this way? I’ve been walking around with these questions ever since I first visited Morocco in the spring of 2005. Despite warnings from more seasoned travelers, I spent the first two days of my stay in a state of complete agoraphobia, holed up in my hotel room in Fes without a clue as to how to deal.

After this initial shock, I became intrigued. I began to observe the attention, examining it and experimenting a little with its limits. I’d change my clothing, varying the amount of bare skin I exposed to the public to see if this correlated at all with the frequency or intensity of the comments, stares and grazing hands that came my way. I even donned a headscarf once. The effect? None whatsoever. And so I came up with a theory. I think that this attention has nothing to do with us as women. It doesn’t matter what we wear, how we behave, or how pretty we are. We could walk around covered head to toe in clothing that hasn’t been washed in weeks, flash a smile of black teeth and exude a smell of sweat across a two-meter radius, and some man would still feel the need to whisper “very niiiiiicce” as we limped by. It has nothing to do with us – and everything to do with them, with the men. My theory is that men in Morocco have so few ways in which to exercise and display their masculinity, that anonymous women on the street become the unwitting target of their frustrated need to show the world they’re male.

I’ve devoted earlier posts to the problem of Moroccan masculinity. The Moroccan masculine ideal – defined by dominance, power, and independence – is difficult, if not impossible, for a man to live up to. In a patriarchal society with a developing economy and a high rate of unemployment, very many men are stuck in a position of relative dependence – whether it be on their father, an employer, or some other figure who exercises power.** The result is that they act out their frustrated need for dominance and power in a space where they do not risk offending someone to whom they are subordinate – in the no man’s land where social norms don’t really count: the street.

Furthermore, Moroccan social norms and the gender segregation they sanctify mean that men have very little permitted access to women. There are very few acceptable ways and places for innocent flirtation (flirtation that is not meant as direct prelude to marriage, that is) – in other words, there is no sanctioned way for a Moroccan boy to parade his masculinity around and attract the most appealing female without the risk of consequences. Another frustration they act out in the space beyond social norms – by aggressively flirting with anonymous women who are not a part of their social community. Strict rules within the social fold elicit acting-out behaviors in the abject areas beyond its boundaries.

These norms also ensure that male-female interaction is beset by tension. The politic of segregation teaches children and teenagers that the opposite sex is inherently and dangerously different. It teaches them that the other gender is there for marriage and sex, not for friendship and normal human-to-human relating. It nips any potential for mutual understanding and communication in the bud.

Of course all of this is evolving. Moroccan social norms have been subject to rather rapid change – a development Moroccans themselves conceive of as ‘modernization’ and regard with a fair amount of ambivalence. Men and women can be friends – and one thing I’ve been so struck by in Rabat is the seeming informality and comfort of contact between the genders. But day-to-day attitudes and public behavior always lag a step or two behind institutional social change.

Maybe the crux of the problem hides in our inability to span the gap of understanding between genders. The thing is that Farid can’t understand what it’s like. No non-female can understand this feeling of complete and entire objectification; this denial of your freedom to be anonymous, of your private space, and of your very fellow human-ness; the insistence always to see you as a woman, and never as a person. No non-female can understand how it feels when you are expected to remain demure and modest, yet somehow must acquire a basic sense of self-respect.***

But the thing is also that no female can understand the social pressure on Moroccan men. High demands and huge limitations on one’s ability to live up to them are an impossible combination. The thing is that men are essentially as objectified as women are. In a society where social connections are everything, men are constantly sized up according to their position in the matrix of power relationships and their relative status in relation to the one doing the sizing-up. If men don’t talk down to someone in an assertion of their dominance, they risk having such subordination imposed upon themselves. Who can blame them for acting out?****

So. To make a long story short, the issue comes down to this. Can you be a respectable woman without demurely allowing yourself to be objectified, and without accepting a man’s refusal to see you as a person? Can you be a confident woman without needing positive reinforcement from random lustful machos on the street? And can you be a real man without needing to assert your male dominance by objectifying women?

One anonymous woman on a busy downtown street had her own answer to these questions. As we hunted for cabs on Monday evening after a satisfying meal at Dar Naji, we heard her screaming to some unfortunate male offender.

“Are you a real man? I don’t think you’re a real man, I think you’re a fag! Go get yourself checked out, fag!”



* I’ve had men lean in and clap in my face to see if I’d react. It leads me to conclude they might be wondering if I’m even real. I get the same sense from their laughter at my Arabic requests to be left alone. They don’t hear what I say; they seem to see a doll talking and are surprised by its lifelike appearance.
** And in a society where social connections are everything, that dependence, that subordinate position, is something you are constantly reminded of.
*** Not to mention the recent addition of new, ‘modern’ expectations: women must remain modest, quiet, and submissive, but must now also become ambitious, successful, and financially self-sufficient.
**** Let me make a disclaimer here that I know I am generalizing. The dynamics of Moroccan society are much more complex and intricate than the rough sketch I am laying out here, and the actual currents carrying along the type of male-female interaction that I am discussing here are much more subtle and multi-pronged than I suggest. I’m just trying to theorize a little.

Thanks, Prins Bernhard!

Last Wednesday, my morning was brightened with a very unexpected piece of good news: I am the recipient of another grant.

This time it’s a Dutch cultural foundation, The Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds to be exact, and they’re giving me a lot of Euros to cover my living expenses in Morocco. Needless to say, I’m grateful, excited, and relieved. It means that I can afford to employ a research assistant, and that I can indulge in the occasional extra trip home.

But most of all, I love the idea that my research is now being funded by American as well as Dutch institutions. Working at the NIMAR has strengthened my self-identification as a hybrid. It hasn’t weaned me away from my Americanness as it drew the Dutchness that had floated to the deeper recesses of my sense of self closer to the surface. To the contrary: it’s helped me realize that to have one foot firmly planted in each culture is to have an identity based on the concept of ‘both’, rather than the notion of ‘split’. I am considered to be as Dutch as the colleagues that hail from Nijmegen or Zeeland – while simultaneously being accepted in all my Americanness. And suddenly, feeling fully Dutch is not a contradiction in terms with feeling fully American. I notice that it changes my comportment. I no longer mind mixing English idioms through my Dutch. I don’t mind not knowing a particular commercial that has my co-workers squirming on the floor with laughter, and I don’t mind messing up when I join the others in singing along with a Dutch classic. While there have been times when I concluded that two halves make less than a whole, I am of the conviction, lately, that in fact it’s two wholes that make an enriching mix.

I hadn’t expected to be eligible for a Dutch scholarship. Sure, I have a Dutch passport, but I’ve been educated abroad, and even my dissertation project has no relation to the Netherlands. This grant’s seeming lack of eligibility requirements seemed almost too good to be true, and I sent in my application with a fair portion of reservations. But here I am, two months later, the new recipient of a considerable sum of money. My American self has been accepted as Dutch enough all over again.
And in any case, if this research is an extension of myself (and considering that my relationship with this project first blossomed in the summer of 2007, it certainly feels as though it is), it seems only fitting that it be the hybrid I consider myself to be; that both American and Dutch funds come together to facilitate this project.

This grant – all of them (never thought I’d be able to speak of grants in the plural!) – means validation. It means that, despite the initial string of rejections, my project is worth funding, after all.

Grounding

Lately, life has been carrying me along too rapidly for me to take any time for reflection, it seems. I have been back in Morocco for more than two months, but it feels as though no more than two weeks have passed. I have utterly enjoyed every minute of these two months, but I have realized that without a bit of time for private reflection, I lose my sense of grounding. My sense of control, my sense of where I am in all this ‘world’ and ‘life’ around me, and my sense of what I am doing there.

It is not the first time that alone time has been hard to find here in Morocco. But despite the intensity of social interaction with my host family last fall, I was always ‘alone’ in my head, in a way – because none of those relationships were based on personal connections, I was able to maintain a kind of observer’s distance, which perhaps means that I was always in a reflective mode. This time around, the social interaction that dominates my days, evenings, and nights, is entirely personal. I am wholly involved in the relationships I have built up, and they have swept me up in a current of activity and interaction so deep I have a hard time reaching the ground with my toes.

Nevertheless, some changes have occurred lately in my situation here – some planned, some by surprise – that have created a greater sense of grounding, and I am hopeful for a greater sense of solidity and control.

First of all, I have moved out of the NIMAR apartment. I now live by myself in a studio on a busy street lined with cafes. I miss living with Fatima but love the space I now have to myself, the satellite TV I can watch in bed until late at night, and the bathroom I don’t have to share with anyone. I love waking up with the smell of croissants floating up from the cafés below, and I love playing host to Fatima, Farid, and other friends. I even love having responsibility for a household now – I love having to be organized enough to take out the trash when it needs to be taken out, pay electricity bills when they are due, replacing the tank of propane when I am out of gas.

And secondly, I have been awarded a grant! After three rejections, I finally, finally have a (conditional) award. I will receive this grant only on the condition that my research obtains human subjects approval, and quite a few questions remain to be answered before such approval will be granted, but still – it is such a relief, such an honor, to finally receive a positive response to my grant proposals. And such an exciting (but also a little scary) thought that I will actually be able to begin this research!

I feel lucky, and need to allow myself more often to realize how happy I am these days: I am living in a city I am in love with; I have a beautiful apartment in that city with everything I need; I have the opportunity to start the research project I have been dreaming about for so long, and I get to do it all while spending half of my week in the warm environment of the Dutch institute. And that sense of grounding – I’ll get there, too.

In/Outside

I now live with Fatima, the other Nimar intern. We get along well, and it’s been incredibly interesting to learn more about her perspective on Morocco. For as it happens, she has a completely different relationship with this country than I do. She’s been here much more often, but for much shorter periods of time: every summer, with her family, who are of Moroccan descent.

As we talk, sharing our respective experiences of this culture and society, I get the sense that Fatima seems to position herself at once as an outsider, and as an insider. She displays an extensive knowledge of Moroccan language, tradition, and mentality. Hers is a knowledge that clearly comes from the inside out, so to speak; it is something that comes from a long gestation of lived experience rather than from a book or other third-person account. In her interaction with others, I can tell that life here (the rhythm of it, the logic of it) makes sense to her on a much more instinctive level than the way in which things are beginning to make sense to me. But at the same time, she often seems to position herself as an outsider. As she describes her interaction with Moroccans, tells stories about experiences she’s had, sometimes I can see her literally drawing up a wall and separating herself from Moroccanness – describing customs, habits, or traditions as the somewhat curious habits of an other people, in the same way that the average European or American would.

Matching this dual perspective is also a dual perception of her on the part of other Moroccans – and perhaps this lies at the source of her own ambiguity. She obviously blends in easily, as a Moroccan-looking girl who speaks fluent Darija (the Moroccan dialect of Arabic), but she often mentions being perceived as an outsider – and I pick up on this, too. I see it in the smiles she gets from shopkeepers who comment about her accent, and the attention she and I both get in the medina: she is often not seen as a Moroccan. Not as a ‘real’ Moroccan, anyway. As she herself says, it is as though Moroccans have a sixth sense for this; it’s like they can smell that she did not grow up here.

I wonder what this must be like – and I wonder if it’s anything like the feelings I have about the Netherlands, the way I am perceived there by my friends and family. Whether it is at all similar to the sense I have of being both insider and outsider, in the Netherlands as well as the United States. I mean that sense of being considered part-of-yet-not-quite, in either country. I probably take up that same kind of dual stance when I talk about the Netherlands and – these days much more common – when I talk about the US.* I catch myself doing it sometimes; I will hear myself talking about “Americans,” and realize that I sound as though I am no more than the observing anthropologist – as though ‘Americanness’, like ‘Dutchness’, is not a part of me.

I have the lucky situation, though, that I can blend in – in either country – until I myself choose to unveil my otherness. It is not until I reveal to a shopkeeper in the Netherlands that I am not familiar with Euro coins that I get a strange and almost disapproving stare, and it is not until I reveal to my American friends that I’ve never seen “the Goonies” that they send a barrage of questions my way. This is not the case for Moroccans in the Netherlands who, in Holland, are instantly identified by merit of their looks as non-indigenous. It does not matter what your passport says, how well (and accentless) you speak the language, or where you and your parents were born. Darker skin and an Arabic name means that you are inherently an allochtoon, a foreigner.

But if Fatima is right about this sixth sense that Moroccans have, the same instant recognition of something ‘other’ exists here in Morocco, as well.

We tend to forget (or simply fail to realize) that migrants are perceived as outsiders not only in their country of new residence, but often also in their country of origin. Dutch social science and popular press has picked up on this a bit as it pertains to Dutch youth of Moroccan descent. Dutch society perceives them as ‘Moroccan’ – but every summer, when they drive their hard-earned cars down to Morocco and spend their summer nights promenading along the Mediterranean coast, they are perceived as foreigners – as Europeans. I remember media stories from a few years past, in which a number of teenagers were interviewed during these holidays in their (parents’) country of origin. They expressed a sense of alienation and uprootedness that I was struck by – because it seemed so hopeless. That feeling of belonging nowhere creates an emptiness that I needed time to get used to – and I think my alienation is much less acute than that of these young adults.

But I have to say that in terms of that insider-outsider stance, I feel completely at home at the Nimar, where I think we might share some of this feeling. We are all transnational: those of us who are Dutch are – obviously – all expats here in Africa, and those of us who are Moroccan have spent time in Europe. Both Morocco and the Netherlands are treated simultaneously as home front and as foreign territory. It creates an interesting sense of mobile rootedness. The US remains far away, but other than that, I feel fairly grounded here…


* For these days my perceived identity has been switched around: it is now the American connection that people do not see until I alert them to it. After spending eight years of having to explain my Dutch side, this is an interesting change. Nevertheless, it is striking to me how little has changed about my personal experience – though the poles have reversed, the ambiguous insider-outsider feeling remains completely unchanged. I’m still the seeming member of the club – until it becomes clear that there is some element of common cultural knowledge that I am not privy to.

Guiding/Guided

Apart from my main responsibility to the conference on migration, one of my new jobs at the Nimar is to help coordinate two cultural programs organized for our sizeable group of students. One of these is a mandatory lecture series on themes relevant to Moroccan culture and issues present in Moroccan society – about which I’ll write more in a later post. The other is a more recreationally-oriented series of field trips and interactive forms of entertainment, one every other week, meant to facilitate students’ exploration of their surroundings in a more hands-on way.

It was in connection with this latter activity that today, I found myself in charge of a tour through the old medina of Rabat. Seeing as we’d hired a guide to take care of the tour’s content and ended up with such a small group of students that we looked more like a group of friends than a group of tourists, my responsibility did not involve much more than carrying with me the envelope containing payment for the guide.

The guide was a friendly jellaba’d man in his sixties who had a clear love of languages. We had hired him because he spoke German (which is close enough to Dutch that most of our students would be able to understand him well enough, we reasoned), but he made clear early on in his conversations with us that he spoke a whole collection of tongues: aside from German he mastered French, Italian, Spanish, English – and showed himself amazingly adept at picking up our Dutch. Once he learned that our students were studying Arabic, he took it upon himself to turn his tour into a veritable cornucopia of linguistic variation. It became a pleasant exchange of languages and words; through his combined Franco-German explanations, he threw in a few Arabic terms here and there, playing around with the students’ budding knowledge of that language. Motivated by this man’s linguistic energy, some of us began to eagerly feed him new words in Dutch, to add to his collection. With such a small group – five students, and the two Nimar interns, me included – his tour became more of a conversation than a lecture, and as we walked down Rue Souika, turned left onto the Rue des Consuls and headed toward the lookout point at the far end of the Kasbah des Oudaias, the guide eagerly answered our multitude of questions with additional stories and anecdotes.*

I have to say that I didn’t participate as much in this conversation as I might have liked to, because I had taken it upon myself to trail behind a little bit. I already knew the medina, I figured, and so I thought to keep some distance from the guide – not only to leave the students more space to stay within listening range, but also to pick up on any stragglers that might lose sight of him and get lost. This last worry seemed a bit pointless even at the time – with only 5 students and a relatively straightforward medina, I didn’t have that much to be concerned about. Mais bon, I remembered how intimidated I used to feel by medinas, and my own worries about losing the group and getting lost, four years ago on a tour of Fes.

But I also think that I perhaps took this task upon myself more for my own benefit than anyone else’s. It was a way for my to extend my sense of responsibility for the expedition – and this is a feeling I reveled in a little. Because it underscored how different this new Morocco experience is from previous ones; it illustrated my change in ‘status’. I was no longer the wide-eyed student: I was now part of the organization, the guiding framework attempting to facilitate these other wide-eyed students’ introduction into this different world.

It feels so good to be on the other side. It feels as though I have finally gotten somewhere, after this investment of time and effort, and it adds to the feeling of independence I have finally found in Morocco - the feeling that I can make it on my own. But of course, I can’t avoid also feeling like an impostor sometimes. And in a sense perhaps that’s what my behavior on the tour was about as well: I needed to underscore that transition I’ve made in order to convince myself that I really do belong on the other side – that I really have blossomed from stranger into person-in-the-know. Because as far as I know I’ve come, I’m always one to focus on everything I haven't yet mastered. The ease I don’t yet have with either French or Arabic, the things that still surprise me every day.

But – I’m trying to channel that into motivating energy, using it to propel me ever-forward…

On a side-note: something I found myself wondering about is how a man like this comes to be a tour guide. He was clearly a well-respected guide himself; this he emphasized himself with numerous stories in which his expertise in both cityscape and language was called upon to oblige various groups of high-ranking VIP visitors to Rabat. Nevertheless, as far as I know the job of tour guide does not lend one any elevated sense of respect. It is not a job for the sons of the middle class, and is often described as the kind of profession one rolls into when one has few other prospects (see, for instance, Laila Lalami's 'Hope and Other Pursuits'). This man, though, clearly had a talent for languages and learning – a linguistic competence that went far beyond the conventional spiel that most guides must, for the sake of making money, learn to be able to rattle off for groups of tourists. This man’s speech was not performance, it was not learned – his interaction with us reflected a comprehension, and a true engagement with language. How does someone with such a clear talent end up in this line of work? What was his background, what does his life look like, now? To what economic class does this man belong, and how does that compare to the class in which he grew up? Can he lead a comfortable life? Do his children have prospects?

* Apparently the guide was not universally liked; we received less-than-positive reviews from at least one student. I guess everyone looks for different qualities in their guides...

Letting Loose

Two years ago, the Nimar began its intensive Arabic language program with three Dutch students. The year after, this number doubled to six, and this year we are expecting no less than fifteen students. They all come from Dutch universities, and they will be here for either an 8-week or a 14-week program. They have been arriving in Rabat since the middle of last week and have created quite a bit of extra work for Farid, the Nimar’s office manager, as he fetches them from the airport, assists them with their frantic and nervous search for housing, and provides a bit of comfort in all this Moroccan unknown that I’m sure is the cause of all their nervousness. On top of that, his apartment is still in the midst of renovations that were initially slated to take no more than his ten days of winter break, this past December, and so he has been a bit of a nomad.*

And so last night, he decided it was time to let loose. We dressed up, he called his friend Samad to meet us at the train station, and off we went for a night on the town. After a fruitless attempt to have dinner at the Goethe Institut (too crowded, too much of a wait) we ended up at a restaurant adjacent to the train station. The place was deserted, but it looked inviting and offered the great variety of menu options that is characteristic of this type of Moroccan restaurant: sandwiches, salads, “grille” platters, crêpes, tajines (Moroccan stew – the type of meal I ate every day with my host family), and couscous on Fridays. An option for any appetite, in other words. As we looked over our menus, both Farid and Samad engaged in a friendly chat with the establishment’s owner. It was the kind of conversation that always emerges in Morocco, that makes you think that everyone here knows each other. There was that instant comfort and friendliness that I love, and that always makes me smile. It turns out that Farid and Samad actually did already know the owner in some way: Farid had been there before, I believe, and Samad, who is a producer of tile and other bathroom hardware, had actually supplied the restaurant’s floors.

As the owner walked away, Farid leaned over to me and said, “see, this is how you do it. You chat a little, make friends. That way you know you’ll get good service, and perhaps they’ll even throw in a free dessert.” And he was right. Just as we were beginning to decide on our menu choices, the owner returned and made us an offer we could not refuse: a three course meal for the three of us, consisting of a large salad, a “mix grille” platter, followed by dessert. It was delicious. A “mix grille” is basically a platter of skewers with various varieties of meat: pieces of beef, sausages, kefta (ground meat with spices), and so on. Along came a bowl of a kind of harr (Moroccan hot sauce) though not as spicy as usual, as well as rice, fries, and bread (there is never a shortage of carbs here). The meat hit the spot: without a working fridge I’d been living on Nutella, bread, and bananas, and was craving some protein. By the time dessert – a platter of fruit – was served, we had all eaten way too much to touch anything else. We paid the bill (definitely less than we would have spent if we’d all ordered separately), thanked the owner, pocket the business cards he gave us, and headed out.

This is how it works in Morocco. It’s the thing that makes me most nervous, but it’s also what I love the most: the fact that every daily transaction involves a conversation, a friendly chat. It opens doors, broadens your options, renders everything more pleasant, and can make life a bit easier. There is always room for negotiation.** This can be unsettling to the foreigner (and to me) because it also means that the way-things-work here is much less straightforward, but once you get the hang of it, I think, it can be pleasant. There is a human contact here that warms me up. This happens sometimes in Chicago and San Diego, too, and it’s one of the things I love about these two cities. But it doesn’t compare to the Moroccan level of friendly interaction. This may sound strange, but I think that even in those moments when a vendor or taxi driver attempts to take advantage of a western-looking tourist, there is an openness to dialogue – and if you play along, if you engage in the way a Moroccan would, there is always a good-naturedness about it all that I appreciate. In the end, this person attempting to ‘take advantage’ is simply exploring his options for a bit of gain – a very human and understandable pursuit.

The trick is, then, to play along. I don’t even think it requires expert fluency in Arabic. I think the point is simply to try, to be open, to not be scared of the interaction. I’m getting better, but I really hope that someday, I’ll actually get good at it…

After a brief interlude involving another newly arrived student in need of help, the three of us ventured over to a lounge that doubled as karaoke bar, where we ran into an acquaintance of Farid’s, a Dutch woman who works for the embassy and has contacts with the Nimar (and who had, apparently, heard all about me already…), with her Moroccan partner. The five of us spent the rest of the evening dancing to upbeat, energizing Moroccan songs, and listening to the karaoke-attempts that interchanged them – invariably a slow-ish French pop ballad. An interesting mix of music…

Unbeknownst to any of us, it turns out that all but the real night clubs close these days at 1 am. This apparently has to do with an incident that happed about 6 months ago in Skhirat (a southern suburb), where a bouncer died after being hit by a drunk driver. And so, at 1, we headed home and, after another hour of conversation in the only room with heating, said goodnight and went to sleep.

Today I am taking it easy and trying not to get nervous about my first day of work tomorrow. But I’m going to relax, convince myself that I know more French/Arabic than I think I do (it’s just latent…), and get excited. I’m sure it’s going to be fun.

* He has actually been staying in the other room at the Nimar apartment for the last three nights – and I have to say it’s been nice to have someone else around.
** Don’t take this to mean that anyone can get anything here if they know how to work this system; of course there are a multitude of limits and inequalities to all this openness and friendliness (subtle ones and not so subtle ones) that I as an outsider do not see. What I’m talking about here is simply the general level of interaction involved in simple transactions such as the one at this restaurant, where the two parties operate from a standpoint of relative equality.

Return to Rabat

After a day and a half of traveling, here I am, in Rabat, at an apartment that promises to fulfill all my expectations. I have arrived earlier than either the Nimar or I expected – I discovered late last week that I was leaving Chicago on Wednesday instead of Thursday – and so the apartment is still in its last stages of build-up: living room furniture was just being cut out of its plastic wrap when I arrived, the fridge has not yet been unpacked and plugged in, and here and there a door or lighting fixture has yet to be installed.

But I have a bright and spacious room with a door that locks, ample closet space just for me, a bed ready for a long night’s sleep and… a private bathroom. I’m not sure yet if this will be a private bathroom for the entire month I will be staying here, but at least for the weekend, it is all mine. And it has a shower with hot water. I cannot convey to you how blown away I am by the fact that I am being given all this, here in Morocco. I mean: I knew that this level of comfort and luxury exists here, but the fact that it is all mine, that I can enjoy it all without feeling like I am imposing on someone, is quite unbelievably nice.

If only I could stay here for all four months…

But I’m going to enjoy myself utterly in the next four weeks. The apartment is large: surrounding a large living room are a double room, two single rooms (one of which is mine), a kitchen, dining area, and two and a half bathrooms. We even have a spacious terrace.

The rest of the trip went smoothly. Despite a bit of delay in Madrid, I still arrived in Casablanca in time to catch the 13.00 train I needed to get to the Nimar before it closed. And as I had hoped, I received help with my bags at all stages; never once did I have to carry them on or off a train and up or down a single flight of stairs myself. Sometimes they were helpful fellow travelers, at other times more official porter-types who spend their days helping with bags at train stations. I’ve learned that the idea is to give these men a few Dirhams when they help you. Usually this indeed goes over well – until today. A man in uniform at the airport approached me as soon as the train rode into the station, asked me with a business-tone of voice whether I had a first or second class ticket, and headed for the train with my bags. I followed him up the steps into the front-most second-class compartment, where he put my bags down next to a seat and pointed to where I could sit. I thanked him, found three Dirhams in my pocket to my great relief, and handed them to him. He looked at the coins in his hand, and then looked back at me with a slightly offended air in his eyes. I felt bad: should I have given him more? I was about to explain that I didn’t have any more when it became clear that wasn’t the issue. With the tone of a mother that tells her child it should really have known better, he said to me: “Euros!” A little incredulous I looked back into his offended eyes. “Ma‘andish,” I responded truthfully, ‘I don’t have any!’ He gave me an indignant look, glanced down with disgust at the coins in his hand one more time, and stomped off.

I had to laugh. Why the presumption that I would have Euros? And why did this man prefer Euros over Dirhams anyway? Did he think I’d give him more if I paid in European tender? Is he expecting the Euro to gain on the Dirham any time soon? Would he perhaps have wanted the fifty American cents that I still had in my back pocket? Or would he have wanted to hear me explain that even I wished I had had Euros when I walked around Barajas airport for three hours with nothing to do?

After a cup of tea at the Nimar, I am now sitting at my desk in my new room. I have unpacked, have taken a scalding hot shower, and am now contemplating a trip outside for some sustenance. I’m a little nervous and I have a headache. I no longer have the energy I did when I boarded the flight to Madrid. I’m enjoying the sense of familiarity Morocco is giving me for the first time upon an arrival here (as I looked out the train window at the passing towns, I could still tell what used to strike me as so foreign and exotic, and reveled in the fact that it no longer felt that way. The faces and buildings that passed me by now seemed tangible, real, understood), but now that I am here I cannot help but feel a little overwhelmed that I am back here, in this place where most daily activities take a lot more thought and effort for me than they do at home, because it all works so differently, and requires the use of these languages I am still trying to learn. And no matter how good the French and Arabic sounded in my head, neither came out as well as I had wanted when addressed by customs officials, train ticket vendors, and taxi drivers. I feel a bit more nervousness about the upcoming four-month adventure, and a bit of loneliness – but I will call that jet lag or fatigue and get myself to bed early.

Change of Plans...

My departure is rapidly approaching: only two days remain of this three month period in Morocco – this period that had seemed so long when I was on the other side of it, back in September.

This fact compels me to look back and examine what I’ve done with my time here. Unequivocally, I can say that these past three months have been an absolute success. I may not have gotten two of the three grants I had applied for, but I have obtained research permission at the hospital, gone through a very intense and deep familiarization with Moroccan family life, vastly increased my command of both French and Moroccan Arabic, made new friends, learned a lot about myself – but most importantly, I have come to genuinely love this country and to fully appreciate being here. This, in all honesty, I had not expected. My love-hate relationship and frustration have, by grace of a newly discovered sense of comfort and freedom, made way for serious contentment. I know that Morocco can make life very difficult for very many people. I know that Morocco has its dark sides. I know that I will continue to meet with frustration as I continue my relationship with this country. But I also know that I’ve discovered that there is room for me here, that it is possible to be myself here. I’ve discovered that I can lead the life I want and find the things I need to be happy, right here. I know that I can live here comfortably and pleasantly for a number of years, while I do my research.

With all of these reflections in mind, I had been growing steadily more melancholy as the days raced on and the moment of my departure rapidly approached. Especially because it was completely uncertain when I would be able to return, I really, really did not want to leave – to abandon everything I had begun to establish here. And also because it meant no more blog... this blog, that has been my lifeline these three months, would have no more use.

From my use of language you may have already guessed that something about this situation has changed. And indeed, over the course of one weekend, a sudden and unexpected opportunity radically changed everything…

Because I have been offered a temporary job – an internship, really – at the Dutch cultural center in Rabat! From February to the middle of May, I am going to help organize a Dutch-Moroccan conference in honor of the 40th anniversary of the two countries’ labor migration agreement – the agreement that lies at the foundation of the Netherlands’ current relationship with Morocco. Not only is this right up my alley – I have been doing research on Moroccan migrants in the Netherlands for years – but it is the perfect way to spend more time in Morocco as I wait for more grants to come in. It will allow me to continue studying French and Arabic, to continue solidifying my relationship with the Clinic in Rabat, it’s going to look great on both CV and grant applications, and most importantly: I get to come back! And all that while being paid… honestly, it can’t get any better than this. I am so, so incredibly excited…

And I am no longer sad to leave! What I thought was going to be a separation of indefinite length, has become a six week vacation… They will be six busy weeks – much will have to be done before I come back here (grants, IRB…) – but a great vacation nonetheless, with the prospect of more Morocco-fun in February…

This also means I get to continue with this blog – so stay tuned for new posts in about a month and a half!

On A Personal Note (Of Hybridity)

Last night the Nimar organized an evening of film and debate for a group of Dutch and American students in Rabat. On the basis of a Hollywood production about Morocco in the 1970s, we discussed Morocco’s image in the United States as well as the Netherlands – and from there drifted to a more general discussion about prejudice, generalization, the relationship between West and East, and immigration.

The Nimar announced we would be watching a film called “Marrakech Express” – which I had never heard of before. As it turned out, this is simply the French title for “Hideous Kinky,” a movie I love and actually own. The basic story, set in 1972, follows a woman who has traveled to Marrakech with her two young daughters, hoping to find “truth” – namely “the annihilation of the ego” that is supposedly taught by a certain Sufi order. What I love about Hideous Kinky is that it romanticizes Morocco without reveling in Orientalist exoticism. It celebrates Morocco’s beauty and complexity, but does so indirectly: the film has moved back an extra step of observation, and brings into focus the way in which Western visitors in the hippie era – personified by Julia, the protagonist – experienced Morocco and projected onto it their own created desires for escapism and exotic fantasy.

I live in a different Morocco – another time, another region, another political climate, another world. Nevertheless, the image of Morocco created by this movie rings true to me. It is an image that always remains implicit; no statements are made, no generalizations, no explanations or descriptions. There are simply images that cannot be captured by language or description. These images highlight the exoticism and strangeness (and sensory overload – bright colors, sounds, smells everywhere) that strike most western travelers, but also show the harmlessness of it all. I love how this duality is presented: the viewer gets to know Morocco primarily through the eyes of Julia’s two little girls, who explore Marrakech without judgment or prejudice, as an open space of possibility and adventure; but who are also a little haunted by its strangeness, by a certain discomfort they cannot identify. It comes back in their dreams, where the imagery gives us some indication of the nature of that discomfort. In this dream world they are constantly running through long, dark, claustrophobic corridors – medina alleys, hallways – in pursuit of a loved one, whom they are never able to reach. She is always on the other side of a wall, around the corner, or across a courtyard.* A constant pursuit, and a perpetual inability to grasp, to ground.

And I love the movie’s basic message: that there is no point in searching for “truth,” because that results in nothing but escapism and neglect of your reality – which is where your personal truth really lies. The film does not celebrate pragmatism. To the contrary, it illustrates the beauty of pursuits and passions, but it preaches a kind of down-to-earthness in doing so, a kind of grounding, a not forgetting about who you are. Julia escapes constantly, and persistently so (refusing even to see the Moroccan reality around her for what it is), despite continual forces pulling her back to reality – lack of money, a daughter with an illness, a Sufi sheikh who talks not about “annihilation of the ego” but in fact asks her all about the life she left behind in London. She doesn’t quite get it, even at the end, but we – the viewers – see it.

So – the movie over, we began a debate about common perceptions of Morocco in the United States and the Netherlands: Morocco as the accessible and safe representative of exoticism, Morocco as hippie paradise, Morocco as the “other,” Morocco as desert, Morocco as poor and desolate origin of the ‘troubled youth’ in Holland. Perhaps inevitably, with a crowd of Westerners forced by their sojourn in a Muslim country to figure out their relationship to the world, the discussion moved quickly on to the general topic of Western prejudice and discrimination. We all seemed to be of the same mind about generalization and stereotyping of the Muslim world: we took care to express our sensitivity to the variation of cultures, languages, and histories that constitute this region. Yet I was surprised at the extent to which generalizations and stereotypes did slip into the conversation here and there. The sensitivity to variation did not always seem to be applied to our own part of the world. Stereotypes surfaced – about the United States, about the Moroccan community in the Netherlands, even. Between the various participants we had enough different viewpoints in the room to arrive at a fairly subtle analysis, but it surprised me nevertheless.

I found myself constantly taking up a middle position: pointing to similarities between Holland and the US, comparing Moroccan attitudes to Western ones, contrasting the reality of Dutch-Moroccan youth’s unwillingness to identify with Holland to the reality of the fact that they are often not accepted as ‘Dutch’ by the general population. And as we talked, I began to step back and look at myself, sitting there in between the Americans and Netherlanders. I often take up middle positions in debates, seemingly unable to take up a position (or ever make a simple statement in general) because I always see multiple sides to everything. But that evening I had no choice, it seemed; I simply was in the middle. I am Dutch, but I am also an American student. I was part of both groups, able to represent each – and at the same time unable to fully do so in the same way that others were. I know each society, but I know each imperfectly: I left the Netherlands eight years ago, and I don’t have the experience of growing up American.

And as we began to talk about the young Moroccan community in Holland, the discussion really began to resonate with my own sense of being both-and-in-between. I have done fairly extensive research on Moroccans in the Netherlands, and among Muslim immigrants in the United States. But as I contributed to the discussion, I felt myself drawing mostly on my own experience of immigrant identity – of issues with belonging, acceptance, and assimilation. My experience does not begin to compare with the difficulty encountered by these youth, but the observations made about Moroccans suddenly had a familiar feeling.

Efforts to assimilate, I think, can carry with them the risk of losing yourself. Even if you find a way for yourself to combine identification with two different cultural worlds, many others cannot wrap their heads around such hybridity. Adopting one culture seemingly always entails the forgetting of another – in the same way, perhaps, that you can never speak two languages perfectly at the same time. The reaction to this is natural, I think: you begin to grasp on to strings of belonging, however small or big they are, even if that means a rejection of any other affiliations. You begin to develop an unreal nostalgia for the place you come from, begin to idealize and elaborate that part of your identity, even if that impedes the process of assimilation. You search for markers to vouch for the authenticity of your ‘original’ identity – you wear particular clothes, highlight your accent when you speak, talk about the host country as though you are a mere visitor, tout a taste for music from your country of origin, search for other ex-pats in your area, turn back to your country’s national religion. If an identification with the host country is not accepted by the general population there, this nostalgic tendency can be even stronger. In Holland, Dutch-Moroccans are persistently seen as nothing but ‘Moroccan’ or ‘Muslim’ (two identifications that are often conflated with one another by the general public). It is not surprising at all, I think, that they react to this by rejecting the identity they are not granted by society, and strengthening the ones they can claim legitimately. How can we expect them to identify with Holland when we persistently keep referring to them as “Moroccan youth” – and when that term has become synonymous with “troubled youth”?

In my own case, there was no rejection. To the contrary: I can fit in completely, in the US. I can pass for American: I have no accent when I speak English, I know the ins and outs of American culture by now, and my northern European appearance easily passes for WASP. This, however, did in fact make me lose myself, for a while. I no longer knew who I was: my Dutchness had not only become something of the past, but had become a past that had been erased by assimilation. It no longer seemed relevant. When I began to pull myself together again, I did so by reaching back and bringing that past back to life. I began to underscore my difference, my otherness – while simultaneously being frustrated that the choice to focus on my past seemed to erase a present. I could claim neither a Dutch present, because I now lived in America, nor an American present, because I was in a sense denying my identification with the United States.

It was not until I spent a significant amount of time outside of either country – here in Morocco, in fact, four years ago – that these two parts of myself fell into place. Before that time, a situation like last night’s would have given me an identity crisis. Now I have a kind of peace about it. There is no more difference between past and present; Holland and the US have come together on either side of that divide. I know who I am. I know what parts of me are Dutch and what parts are American. I have both, and it works for me. I have realized that it does not jeopardize my belonging anywhere, it does not make me any less legitimate, and it certainly does not make me any less of a coherent person. I still run into people who cannot grasp this idea of a joint identity. Surprisingly it is mostly Europeans – both in the United States and Europe – who do not understand that I can live an assimilated lifestyle in California without over-emphasizing my otherness, but still speak Dutch at home, eat the food I’ve always eaten, stay up to date on the Dutch media, and celebrate Dutch holidays.

I still grasp for strings of belonging – because I don’t want to lose my sense of hybridity. I still insist on a certain Dutchness, to always complement the Americanness that is more automatically there (because that’s where I live, after all). I will be raising my kids, if or when I ever have them, as perfect hybrids who speak Dutch and know the ins and outs of Dutch culture. But it all has a place now; this Dutchness no longer exists in contradiction with my Americanness.

Here in Morocco, I think this blog has become my grasping. It’s not a tool of belonging, but it is a way for me to remember who I am and why I am here, at the moments when my total immersion, loss of privacy, and inability to be self-sufficient reduce me to the status of a child. Writing has always been a way of grasping for me, I think, and it is something I have never been able to live without.


* This is a feeling I especially identify with in Morocco. I do finally feel like I am getting to know the country, but that sense of perpetual inability to get somewhere, to truly understand, to penetrate those walls and lose that simultaneous sense of claustrophobia and complete exposure – that’s something I really recognize.

Stigma

A productive day. Taking care of business felt so good I felt like I was walking on air, felt like I was bigger than Rabat – until I had my first Moroccan Arabic (also called ‘darija’; pronounced DArizya) class today and realized how far I have yet to go.

I went to the ATM to get huge amounts of money to pay for my stay with the host family, and then stopped by the Dutch cultural center, the NIMAR, basically to show my face and let them know I’m back. Last summer they were incredibly helpful and inviting, and I spent a lot of time in their limited but relevant library reading up on Moroccan history and on the healthcare system. There is an American center in Rabat as well (the MACECE), but they’ve told me explicitly they cannot/will not offer me any assistance, because I do not have an American passport. Apparently it does not matter that I study at a US university, or that I’m a permanent resident. But I digress. At least there’s this Dutch center, and the administration there has indicated it is wiling and able to help me with contacts, research permission, and the like. Which is why I had to go and tell them I’m back, and that I might (hopefully) actually need their help with all that pretty soon. It turns out that the director is in the Netherlands at the moment, but I talked to someone else for a while, a woman who coordinates migration studies, and spent a wonderful hour in the library on their wireless connection – which meant internet access on my very own computer.

On the way back home for lunch I bought today’s edition of Le Monde and spent another wonderful hour on the couch finally catching up on world affairs. That might be the thing I miss most, being here – access to the news, being up to date on what’s going on, with the presidential campaigns, and with the markets. I hate it that I’m missing the debates, missing Palin’s gaffes, missing SNL renditions of those gaffes, missing the shifts in public opinion. There is a news broadcast here in French, but my host family is not necessarily interested, and they are so loud that I usually can’t make out what the newscaster is saying above the conversation going on around me.

This afternoon I had my first class. And despite what the first sentence of this post might suggest, it was great – but it was also a wakeup call as to how much work I have ahead of me. I seem to understand a fair amount, at least when the Arabic is spoken slowly, but producing it myself doesn’t quite go as I’d wish. My tongue is not used to the sounds anymore, it doesn’t roll out smoothly yet.

The class was basically unstructured; Ilyas, my teacher, mostly asked me questions and kept a conversation going, writing words I did not know on the board and explaining in Arabic what they meant. I’m curious to see if this will be the basic gist of all classes to come. It made me feel a little lost; I like structure. I want grammar explanations, verb conjugations, tenses, systems, regularity. I want to know what a word is, grammatically, so I can conjugate it, play around with it. This may be difficult to provide with a language like Moroccan Arabic, because it’s mostly a spoken language. But of course I’m sure I could ask for more systematized grammar explanations if I need them, and I have my own grammar book for reference.

The conversation was interesting though, and useful. Ilyas asked me what I was doing in Morocco, and I explained – as far as was possible, substituting a lot of French words for the Arabic I didn’t know – the basic gist of my research: a comparison between psychiatry and traditional healing in Morocco. He in turn wrote on the board all the key terms of my research in Arabic, so I now know how to refer to psychiatrists and various traditional healers by their appropriate local names. Then he asked me precisely the questions that basically constitute my main research problem: why do people choose one over the other? I gave him the socio-economic reasons (because those I knew how to explain in Arabic): because they don’t have money they go to a healer rather than a doctor, or they do so because there is no doctor in the area. But, Ilyas said, people with money avoid psychiatrists, too. Apparently, as he explained, this is because when you go to a psychiatrist, you are labeled as crazy (‘hmaq’). This does not happen when you go to a healer, because that’s labeled as ‘culture’. This is interesting. Because much of the literature I’ve read features prejudice too, but toward the other side: people (should) seek psychiatric help, because healers are part of a backward tradition, they’re unscientific – and those who visit traditional healers are thereby backward and ignorant, too. Of course this is all literature with a particular agenda. They are ‘performing modernity’, as Professor Zhiri said at my proposal defense. They are part of a Morocco that looks toward a European modernity as the ideal. What Ilyas’ comments suggest, at least, is that the amount of money you have does not determine your outlook on what is an acceptable part of culture and what is not. Having money does not automatically mean you ascribe to a modernity that favors psychiatrists over religious healing. I wonder if there is an automatic connection between that choice and any other factor. Education, maybe? And if so, how is education related to wealth? Or piety? Because as much as it may be culture, these traditions of ‘religious’ healing are strictly forbidden by Islam.

Another interesting thing he mentioned: apparently people do visit psychologists (tbib n-nafsia) with increasing frequency, basically because of the exigencies of modern life – stress, burnout, and so on. Apparently these psychologists prescribe antidepressants (‘antidepressor’ in Moroccan Arabic). There is no stigma attached to this kind of therapy. But a psychiatrist, that’s a different story. So there is a third category of practitioner here. I need to figure out exactly what a ‘psychologist’ is under the Moroccan definition, and how such a person is different from a psychiatrist. A ‘tbib’ is a doctor – is this really a medical doctor who just doesn’t work with the real ‘crazies’, or is a psychologist just called ‘doctor’ because he or she works as a clinician? And if something requiring antidepressants isn’t ‘crazy’, then what is?

During the second hour of class, we read an article from a magazine that was clearly ‘performing modernity’. A reporter had decided to go undercover and expose the hoax that is shouafat – seers. People visit these mediums for any number of problems, ranging from medical to social to psychological. The treatment can involve all sorts of things: sacrifices (chickens, goats – “it’s a whole animal farm,” Ilyas said), concoctions of spices and everyday pantry items, protective amulets, the works – and of course, payment in money or kind to the shouafa (pronounced ‘shuWAfah). This particular reporter went to about five different shouafat, citing the same troubles for all of them: she was in love with a married man who wouldn’t leave his wife, her new boss didn’t like anything she did, and she was generally unlucky. And basically, the proposed treatments included all of the possibilities mentioned above. We didn’t finish the piece, but I think the fact that treatment varied so much was (part of) the reporter’s proof that all this shouafa-business was BS.