Category: all things moroccan
“Why don’t you come have dinner at my house?” I’ve heard that invitation over and over since arriving here this weekend. I try to convince my friends and relatives to eat out but they won’t hear of it. “You must really be American now if you insist on eating out so much. Besides, you have to taste my (insert name of favorite dish).” And so I’ve been gorging myself on couscous, pastilla, rghaif, mechouis, escargot, all sorts of fish, and drinking glass after glass of mint tea. When we do go out to the beach or downtown for the day, they won’t let me buy the food no matter how much I protest.
Over the meals, people talk about Hicham El Guerrouj’s incredible performance at the Olympics, about the upcoming census, and about Iraq and the U.S. elections. I can honestly say that the only time I’ve heard such ardent Bush-bashing was back home, in Portland.
Yesterday I watched a pick up game of soccer while we were at the beach, just outside the capital of Rabat. A group of eight shirtless teenagers were playing, a few of them barefoot on the cement basketball court. There were three or four of these courts by the beach, but no soccer field, even in this soccer-mad town. So the kids had just used one of the basketball courts for their game. They’d divided up the teams by having four of them play with their shoes on and the other four with their shoes off. The kids in shoes were winning.
Like that game of soccer, Morocco is divided between the haves and the have nots; the mansions with their marble arches, and the shacks with their corrugated tin roofs held down by rocks, only a mile away; the westernized to the point of mimicry and the traditional to the point of extremism; the 9-to-5 workers and the jobless who sit in cafes, watching them come and go; the bikini-clad girls and those who flaunt their scarves instead of their breasts.
As I was getting ready to leave, the barefoot kids scored. I jumped up to cheer them, but they were too overjoyed to notice.
I was thrilled to hear that Hicham El Guerrouj won the gold in the 1500 meter race. If you’re unfamiliar with him, well, let’s just say that he’s the greatest mile runner of all time and this win means so much because of his previous losses in Sydney in 2000 and Atlanta in 1996. But his perseverance has finally paid off and I can only imagine what his homecoming will be like. Well, maybe I won’t have to imagine it. I’ll be going to Morocco in a couple of days, so I’ll see for myself.
Interesting article in the Daily Star about the phenomenon of foreign workers’ remittances in Morocco. A recent study by the IMF finds that money sent or brought to Morocco by its immigrants in Europe and elsewhere is now reaching about 9% of its GDP, with top reasons being “attachment to the homeland” and “altruistic motives.” However, the report warns,
With workers’ remittances largely flowing into construction activity and only a small portion going to the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises, it is clear, Bougha-Hagbe says, that Morocco is not yet taking full advantage of the skills of the younger generations, who are not only highly qualified but also more likely to be entrepreneurs.
Read the article here (and scroll down for the second portion.)
The Summer 2004 issue of Tingis, a quarterly magazine devoted to Morocco, is now available, with non-fiction by Anouar Majid, David Kuchta, Oumelbanine Zhiri, and others.
Faouzi Bensaidi writes about his teenage years in Morocco, which formed the basis of his movie, A Thousand Months. The opening anecdote is highly illustrative of the repressive atmosphere of the 1980s
In the autumn of 1981, when I was 14, I read some of my poetry to my schoolmates. The collection, I blush to recall, was called My Loves and My Rebellions. When the reading was over, the other pupils applauded and I felt like a rock star.
A young man came up to me afterwards. He had long hair that had never seen a comb yet was still smooth and beautiful, fingers stained yellow by cheap tobacco and a tough, dangerous look in his eyes. And, of course, a beard. These were the days when a beard was a homage to Marx or Che Guevara, not some mullah or other. He offered to help me publish my poetry.
Bensaidi meets this Che-like character again and gives him his poetry collection.
The young man told us that he had been jailed for his beliefs. He was a student at Fez university, which he portrayed as a remote and intriguing place, with its student rebellion, its Marxist-Leninist groups, and the sometimes violent confrontation with Islamist movements. The fundamentalists were small in number, but tolerated by the authorities. In the dangerous game that a number of countries practised at the time, they were used as a counterweight to the left. You’d think no one had heard about Frankenstein and his monster.
The student promised he’d be in touch once he’d shown my poems to his comrades. After he left, my friend said I’d been an idiot to give my poems to such a shady character. “Whatever happens, you’re done for,” he told me. “If he’s from the underground and he’s picked up with your poems on him, you’ll be arrested. If he publishes you, that’ll prove that you’re part of his group. And if he’s an informer who wanted a record of what he heard yesterday, you’re screwed.”
Bensaidi went on to become a filmmaker and A Thousand Months is now playing in Morocco (where I hope to see it when I visit in a few weeks.)
Thanks to David for the link.