atlas shrugged

I’ve spent time in Rabat, Fes, Marrakech, Casablanca, Meknes, Chefchouen, Kenitra, Tangier, Midelt and Merzouga, the Rif and the Atlas, the Atlantic and the Sahara, and now I’m going home. The best stories will get told, the details elided, nothing really explained; like someone said, we can’t control how we’ll feel about anything, only how those feelings will then make us act. I’ll have a handful of pictures and hopefully some friends with the same memories; how can you really verify your memories if not by the memory of someone else?

I would feel more strange if I thought this were the only experience like this I’d ever have. The possibility that I’ll return here or use this to better experience another place makes me feel less sad about leaving, as if the emotional impact of this trip were explicitly mediated by its relation to other places and times, which is just wrong (I think). This thinking makes me ignore Morocco and instead focus on myself and my sensory experience of another place; is this still Orientalist thinking anyway? Instead of relying upon the East to magically transform my person I instead ignore it but reap the benefits of my travels here anyway. I don’t think this is true. I’m just trying to soak it in.

Keep your stupid comments in your pocket

A pretty solid assessment of recent attacks on Egyptian women’s rights came out in Salon today. It made an important point I should keep in mind: “On a more ideological plane, Muslim conservatives have successfully painted sexual liberty and gender equality as a Western import designed to weaken Egypt’s Islamic identity and corrupt Egyptians. The argument is that only by embracing Islamic traditions and morals wholeheartedly can Egyptians resist Western hegemony and recaputure their past glory.”

Arguing for cultural integrity over imported Western justice, or however you want to frame it, is ridiculous. I struggle with this idea a lot, and women’s rights are constantly on my mind, even more so here than in the states. I understand that it’s important to understand different cultures and societal structures, but my blood starts boiling every time a man stares me down in the street or throws out some stupid comment. So about 30 times a day (this is not an exaggeration). HOW MANY CAMELS FOR YOU? HELLO! HI! ARE YOU AMERICAN? TU ES BELLE. ARE YOU A SPICE GIRL? GOOD MORNING SWEET HONEY. YOU ARE SO FUCKING BEAUTIFUL. Just shut up. Even in a large group of women (both American and Moroccan) some dude came up and whispered something in my ear. Of course, I had no idea what the fuck he said, but GET OUT OF MY SPACE. By the time I actually registered that yes, that did just happen, I only had time to turn around and shoot him a disgusted look as he slipped away into the crowd.

I can’t imagine living this way forever (not to mention we’re not supposed to be out at night without being accompanied by a boy, or smoke cigarettes or hashish in public like nearly every man in this country). I want to like Morocco and I want to understand Islam but I can’t get past how angry these things make me. Please, just let me walk down the street without feeling the need to speak to me. Do you think I need your commentary? I don’t.

I’m going to start taking after this group of Egyptian women and start screaming people down in the streets.

Morocco’s alchohol situation…

is really hard to understand. When we arrived we were given this article from The Economist, which lays out a far too minimal assessment of alcohol’s place here. The only interesting part of the article were the opening two lines:

“Tourists may be forgiven for thinking that drinking alcohol in Morocco is legal. You can happily buy the stuff in supermarkets, bars and smarter restaurants, but Muslims, who make up the vast majority of Moroccans, are strictly forbidden to drink it.”

This discrepancy between something being technically legal yet extremely frowned upon is mind-boggling; I can’t think of any similar concept in the states. To have to sneak around in order to do something legal feels so strange; you can legally order alcohol at certain bars but you still must lie to your parents about it. On the other hand, it’s a big thing for men to just hang out in a café and smoke weed all day, which is illegal yet still more acceptable here.

Additionally, Islamic and secular law only fairly recently became separated in the Muslim world; before there wasn’t really law without religion. I’m not sure if this makes the discrepancy more or less understandable. I’m still a little sketchy on the details, but colonialism had a pretty large role in changing this. I find myself seeking out the remnants of the French and loathing certain Moroccan characteristics. My mind keeps wanting to pit alcohol availability against street harassment, as if one were only French and one were only Moroccan, or as if these aspects really summed up anything about the cultures they came from.

1.17.12 - Fes

I know I was totes ready to leave yesterday, but now I’m starting to realize how sad I’ll be to leave the Alouis. My host mom told us she wished our trip to Rabat was “l’enverse,” (the opposite): that we would stay in Rabat for a week and a half and in Fes for the rest of the two months. “Vous êtes gentille et calme. Vous m’aime.” All this from a woman that I’d been unsure about most of my time here; I’m glad to know she did enjoy having us here.

We’ve been spending a lot of time under blankets in the communal bed room (three beds mashed together) studying, watching TV, and eating dinner with the family. I just we had more time.

1.16.12 - Fes

I wake up around six this morning to the sounds of a call to prayer and a cat getting the shit raped out of it; I promptly begin barfing up whatever I ate for dinner last night (sheep? camel?). After finally falling back asleep, I wake up again at seven and throw up all the water I’d drank after the initial puking. Back to sleep, wake up at nine; shower for class. It’s raining and everything’s covered in mud. I make it to class and sit in the back for easy bathroom access. Back home for lunch and I try not to eat too much sheep. It’s so cold today we eat in one of the rooms off to the side of the main courtyard; it is actually much warmer (why haven’t we been doing this for every meal?). I decide to go to Arabic instead of staying home (which had been recommended to me). Everyone spends the whole class either being obnoxious assholes or wanting to murder everyone. There are verbs in dharija for “to breakfast,” “to lunch,” and “to dinner” (shit’s just that important, I guess).
Leave class in the rain, a friend and I trek to Café Clock (the most touristy place around), and I get some goddamn french fries and a milkshake. Now back home, watching an Arabic soap opera in the main bedroom that’s really warm and almost entirely beds (this is my first time actually being in here, and I’m pretty sure everyone but my host parents sleep in here, which would be five people). My roommate and I are doing our work while the rest of the family watches TV, does homework, or just mumbles in their sleep. It’s cozy. But I’m ready to leave Fes.

Apparently movie theaters here are few and far between (the best one, Megarama, is in Casablanca), and everyone either buys extremely cheap DVDs or downloads whatever they want without fear of punishment. The government doesn’t care about the pirating of foreign films or music, which is the vast majority of what Moroccans consume. My host brother’s favorite movie? The Notebook. Today I showed him Biggie.

to sleep or to read
to sleep, perchance, to dream
to read, well,