The Hammam: A Potentially Revealing So-Moroccan Tradition

It is always hard to recreate the sense of the unknown retroactively. Whatever excited anticipations you had, whatever fears before the fact, once you’ve experienced something, now-you-know and can’t remember not knowing. Recreating the journey from hammam virgin to hammam regular is challenging in that way. Perhaps it is easier simply to state the bits I had heard before my first trip to the hammam;

-In December, I spoke with Molly, a fellow Macalester student who came to Rabat a year before. Her homestay house hadn’t had a shower but many did; regardless, I wasn’t to worry because my family would undoubtedly offer to take me to the hammam with them and after a trip, I’d be the cleanest I had ever been.

-At a Barnes & Noble I browsed a travel book on Morocco shortly before I came. The must-do’s included a trip to the local hammam, a “quintessentially Moroccan” gender-segregated public bathhouse the publishers assured would be in every neighborhood. The hammam was a common part of life where all Moroccans went to get clean and apparently there were assistants that could be hired for cheap to scrub you (some would offer massages for more), I read. Also, if you were a woman, be aware that Moroccan women don’t subscribe to the same social norms and will probably ask you why you do/don’t shave whatever it is that you do/don’t shave. The book said nothing to this effect concerning men.

-Then there were the images of bathhouses in other Arab countries that I considered as the time neared. For me, the two prominent ones were from Turkey and “Kazakhstan.” The first image was planted by one of my most loved professors who had been to Turkey and said that the Turkish hammam was a phenomenal spa-like experience. She had made reference to this a few times in class so I was thinking it was pretty good and had high hopes even if I found it hard to imagine that lower-middle class Moroccan families were regularly going to high-end spas in blue-collar neighborhoods. But maybe. Then, Borat, in his boundless efforts to facilitate cross-cultural learning between the West and Kazakhstan, filmed an episode in which he is running around a public bathhouse that looks like the inside of a giant sauna at some local rundown YMCA; he slaps naked men high-fives and “love spanks.” I guess I figured Morocco’s hammam would be somewhere between Turkey and “Kazakhstan.”

-Then I got to Morocco and during my program’s orientation we were told that our host families would offer to take us to local hammams. We should go and experience it insomuch as we were studying “Culture and Society.”

-Also during orientation a health specialist – a prominent physician in the country – came to lecture us on staying well and to give us a bit of insight into the history of public health in Morocco and North Africa. It was a dull but reassuring lecture delivered to inattentive jet-lagged college students who had managed to find a bar in Rabat the night before. He told us that Rabat’s water was now actually drinkable, a pleasant surprise to me. Someone asked if that was the same water in the hammams and he said that yes, all of the tap water in Morocco was the same and fine. As a cultural note on health, he said that Moroccans believed the steamy chamber section of the hammam was good for curing sicknesses and added that we would come to love the hammam, which is “a so Moroccan tradition.” He also went over infectious diseases including leptospirosis, a grave illness that causes liver damage and renal failure, but which was pretty much not a problem in Morocco anymore. Of course, he added, still be cautious about not coming into contact with rat urine at the hammams, as it is those rats and their urine that really pose the most risk in terms of contracting leptospirosis…

…Then I went to the hammam. My homestay house does not have a shower and, as luck would have it, there is a hammam within a one-minute walk of my front door. The hammam was an excursion so enthusiastically offered that it would have been an utter slap in the face to react anything but excitedly to the suggestion. And as luck would continue to abound, my host brother Hicham (who is a 34 year-old, six-foot-four, 240-pound hairy Arab man – details that become relevant at the hammam), used to work at the hammam so really knows what’s up there and is an able-bodied scrubber, to say the least. I now go to the hammam at least twice a week with Hicham. I wish to examine the hammam from a few angles:

1. Concerning Oral-Cavity Etiquette. When Hicham squats down onto my chest and washes my neck with an extremely rough sponge that he wears as a glove (called a “kis”), it is unclear what to do with my mouth. Anything like a grimace could be insulting, signaling that his strokes that scrape off the dirt and top layer of skin are causing me discomfort (insulting to his style and signaling an unmanly pain threshold on my end); a smile could suggest over indulgence or appear forced and false. Tightly closed and flexing my jaw could suggest detachment from something highly interactive and give a cold vibe incongruous and unnatural with an activity embodying such distinct warmth. Slightly ajar and concentrated so as to allow for the deep breaths necessary to counter Hicham’s weight on my lung cavity makes sense as it would seem to be a choice of function over form, thus alleviating the pressure to make a decision reflecting cultural knowledge and insider etiquette. The choice to breathe would be obvious and accepted. The unfortunate reality that renders this decision of prioritizing respiration over manners impractical extends to my eyes. As the hammam’s inner chamber is steamy and over 100°F and the scrubbing strenuous, Hicham sweats profusely; beads of salty water which rapidly slide down and then momentarily hang onto the ends of his thick chest hairs before falling upon my face. This renders my lips pursed closed and my eyes squeezed squinted and shut, such that I probably look like a drowning cat to Hicham. On the upside, the breadth of his shoulders hides my face from the general public at the hammam. Then again, my long thin white legs kicking from under his immense dark back might also betray the image of worldliness and cross-cultural understanding that I hope to project in aspiring to good hammam etiquette…

2. Economics. Considering the hammam reveals a number of things about economics in Morocco.

A. Lowering costs through the collective. Many Moroccans are not wealthy but appreciate certain luxuries – they are not poor by global comparison – so resources are pooled in order to provide desired goods and services. While the hammam certainly has a longstanding tradition in Moroccan culture and society and would probably exist even if Morocco’s economy was stronger and its citizens wealthier, it is an example of a resource made more affordable through the collective. Water and showers are expensive and extravagant yet people in this country are not dirty and desire bathing so by having a public place for it, all can enjoy the luxury without bearing the cost of a private shower. Similarly, as Western influence continues to emerge in Moroccan culture and society, I imagine that very few upper class Moroccans go to hammams, preferring a nice shower in the home. Further, Morocco, like the rest of the world, is undergoing a process of enormous urbanization and families are increasingly likely to move into the cities. This phenomenon is usually explained by a lack-of-opportunity versus more-opportunity trend wherein “opportunity” is basically thought of first and foremost as employment. Certainly though, larger groups of people living together allow for more sharing of costs and I suspect that this will begin to manifest itself more evidently in more realms, and in turn, continue to fuel the growth of cities. Obviously, this is not a groundbreaking economic concept but it has been minimally discussed in scholarly articles I have read on the reasons precipitating urban growth in Morocco. I can’t help but hope that as this happens more, there will be more positive environmental implications. The hammam saves a lot of water and sharing resources is an obvious step towards sustainability.
B. Job types. Jobs in Morocco differ from jobs in the United States in that there is a lot more specialization among lower classes in large cities. A surplus of shoe-shines, minipack-of-Kleenex-sellers on the corner, individual-cigarette dealers and hammam scrubbers are features of an economy wherein everyone needs to work to get by… so they do. To a degree, this differs from my experiences in Central America where the very poor and very uneducated in large cities are more likely to beg, steal, wait for remittances from family in the United States or become involved in organized crime. Certainly, there are hundreds of thousands of more poor people working in highly specialized “poor” jobs such as shoe-shines in Guatemala and El Salvador than in the United States but the extent to which people in Morocco find a way – someway – to work is astonishing and more overwhelming than in any other country I have visited.
C. Exoticization and marketing. As a rapidly developing economy, Morocco is increasingly trying to market itself as an “exotic” tourist destination to Western Europe and the United States. The hammam that I go to is authentically Moroccan and there is, frankly, nothing exotically-alluring about it… save the fact that guys don’t get together to bathe each other stateside and I wouldn’t call that alluring. “Foreign” is a better adjective than “exotic,” but “exotic” is the marketing angle so many industries are trying to deliver to tourists here. Really, the hammam looks like a run down gym. You walk into a main locker room with benches and guys getting dressed. Then there is a main door which gives way to a set of three tiled rooms (tile on the floor, walls and ceiling) separated by walls with a single, central archway that is always open – no doors once inside. The first room is warm, the next room is warmer and the final room is steaming hot because there is a large stone bathtub into which comes boiling water from a spigot like we have in U.S. yards to hook our hoses to. You take your bucket, dip it into the tub of water, dump it wherever you are going to sit to wash off the dirt of whoever sat there previously, go get more water and then sit there and clean yourself or have someone do it for you. Some guys stretch and crack each others’ backs. It would be like combining the sauna and shower of a local gym. The whole thing is about the size of a basketball court divided into equal thirds with about forty people in it at any given time. But if you Google search “Moroccan Hammam” you will notice that the places advertised play to the Orientalist conceptions Westerners may have of Morocco. Hot stones, candles, olive oil lotions, massages, glimpses behind large and intimidating doors, as if one is peering into the wet and wild world of harems where – gosh, I don’t know – a masseuse-concubine will rub you down after a tough day of camel riding. Take, for example, this place:
The layout of Marrakesh’s main square, the obvious extra-care-taken of the Casbahs on Rabat’s beach, the camel riding tours, the lush “riads” … all are marketed to me everyday and, as best I can tell, have very little to do with Morocco and everything to do with how I imagined Morocco prior to coming.

3. Gender, power and sexuality. It is my conclusion that Moroccan men can contribute a very significant part of their sense of self to being men. Me too, obviously, but my sense of self based on being a man has relatively little (I’d like to say “nothing” but I want to be safe) to do with an inherent sense of power. Suffice it to say that despite inroads and recent rapid changes, most Moroccan women and men still definitely subscribe to “traditional” gender roles in which men have a lot more power. It is a very immediately noticeable and even jarring feature of society here to me as a U.S. American. An interesting and, I think, related phenomenon in the hammam is the extent to which everything is highly egalitarian between men. My thought is that men, whose sense of power (and to a corollary but lesser extent their sense of worth) is largely based in contradistinction to women, such that when women are removed from the social scene, and men are, in turn, more tense and subconsciously very aware of their relative lack of power. I might be imagining/exaggerating it but I think not. Because there are no women around the hammam to affirm a man’s sense of self, relations between men are good or okay only when there is no threat related to social power. At the bathtub with their buckets, there is an extreme amount of attention paid to filling buckets in order and considerately, never allowing the line to grow for one’s own convenience or because one can’t carry all the buckets at once. Fist fights break out commonly at the hammam which suggests that there is some tension around this. Men are also highly careful to scrub one another’s backs with care and to do so thoroughly. The reciprocity of back-scrubbing is highly valued – made manifest in really very much too much time spent on it – as a way of showing respect. Also, in a situation in which men are getting together to bathe, no one ever takes off their underwear. In fact, it is almost funny to see how private everyone is with their private parts after sitting on each other’s chests in wet boxers – going into corners to soap up down there. While totally immodest about their bodies and rubbing them together, full frontal nudity crosses the line. My hunch is that this is all about egalitarianism and no one wants anyone else to feel inferior based on… err, size. Why else? A final thought on gender, power and sexuality was planted in my mind my freshman year when I took a course called, “Muslims Societies and Identities” when one day the professor casually remarked that it is the idea of a man in a submissive position that is most bothersome to Muslim men. Based on my experience at the hammams, this sort of makes sense -- that homosexuality would be more feared by those that thought it was undermining masculinity and thus power and self-worth and ultimately dangerous to their own sense of self; rather than in the U.S. where fear of homosexuality relates more to it being “unnatural” or an offense against God… both things outside of the individual’s sense of self.

4. Conceptions of Cleanliness. No dirt v. no germs. When I think of clean, I am thinking hygiene and lack of grime. Here, just lack of grime seems to count and they are very serious about it. With the kis (sand paper glove sponge), they really take off the top layer of your skin and they’ll roll shmutz snakes off your back all day and say “wow, bizzef” (“wow, so much!”) until the cows come home. They are perpetually shocked by my filth. While the shmutz snakes, roll off my back, I have to appreciate the ironic. I am face down on a communal tile floor where men walk barefook, sit next-to-naked and where other shmutz snakes that have rolled off of other men’s bodies lie. Soap is also shockingly uncommon here despite the fact that they wash their hands in water all of the time insomuch as the Koran instructs water-cleansing rituals prior to prayer and after many activities. People seem to be sick a good bit here, too. If I worked in public health here, I would start a major soap campaign.

Crazy

I learned the word for “crazy” in Arabic last week. Because I don’t want people to think I am stupid or to stop talking to me in Arabic (I need all the exposure I can get), I have implemented the same rule I used when I was learning Spanish. I only allow myself to ask that something be repeated three times. And only ever three times if I really want to know what is going on. Usually twice is the limit. So when a girl that lives in the neighborhood was over at the house getting tutored by my host sister Nadia (schoolteacher by day and resident neighborhood tutor by night) on her Koranic recitations, I introduced myself and tried to catch her name. Three times. No dice. I smiled, nodded, feigned comprehension, extended my open hand and said in my sorry Arabic, “Nice to meet you, I’m Rob.”

The fact that I didn’t catch her name could be due to any number of legitimate reasons. Perhaps because my ear for Arabic is not particularly good; perhaps because she is only about eleven years old and still talks with her mouth full (and she was chewing on something at just this moment); perhaps because her parents named her something incomprehensible to the majority of even Moroccans (a developing trend among U.S. parents these days); perhaps it’s because she is overtly autistic and breaks her words in odd places, or not at all.

Another of my hosts, Hicham, who is a full-grown man, seemed to think it was definitely the latter reason. He smiled at me and shook his head emphatically, as if to say ‘don’t worry, it’s not your Arabic for once, we don’t understand her either.’ He stuck out his tongue, crossed his eyes and made little circles with his index finger over his temple and bobbled his head back and forth. Then he said in English, “She crazy.” I guess I looked awkward. “Amaq’ha mean crazy in Arabic. She amaq’ha.” He pointed at her for clarity.

The other kids imitated Hicham’s gestures and facial expressions. She – I still don’t know her name so let’s call her “Jane” – imitated them, in turn, and a small pillow fight eventually ensued. All laughed, including Jane, and she went back to howling her Koranic recitations in a manner that was apparently, based on Nadia’s comparative pronunciation, completely wrong.

Anyway, in other places I have been, and especially in my native U.S., the whole bit about making absurd and lunatic facial expressions for “crazy” and pointing at a girl with some mental handicaps – even describing a mental condition as “crazy” – wouldn’t be socially acceptable. Certainly not “PC.” So I had had a little dose of culture shock and went in my room to process.

A few minutes later, another kid, who is about the same age (but unlike Jane in that he isn’t autistic), messed up his recitations and the contingent of kids over at the house doing homework made fun of him and threw pillows at him. Everyone laughed and then things went back to normal, everyone doing their homework while Jane continued to practice the recitations aloud (emphasis on the “loud”).

With that, I had a strange thought. Maybe they had just been treating Jane like every other kid. I seem to remember being made fun of in school, I thought. Might it be that everyone was actually transcending my own frame of “politically correct” by treating her as they would anyone else? She went to a public school; she had to learn her Koranic recitations just like all the other kids; she needed help from Nadia just like everyone else over at the house to do their homework.

Still, I can’t help but be a bit of a cultural chauvinist so I thought about all of the innovative and fantastic (if quite costly) services the U.S. might offer Jane and I was glad I could think of a few. Indeed, in Morocco, she does not get as much help as she would in the U.S. She wasn’t heavily medicated; separated; pitied or explicitly protected as she would have been in the U.S. No prescription drugs to help her focus; no special school; no hush-hush around those ‘poor parents’ who must be so crushed that their daughter has this problem. No pretense.

For a society that is so obsessed with the concept of individualism, it seems that my U.S. hardly takes all of its individuals as they are -- which seems to be at the core of appreciating and celebrating individuality. Sure, there are plenty of services that would make Jane’s life in the United States easier but I am not sure that they would add up to a life as fulfilling for her or for those that know her.

I got back to studying my own Arabic in my room but with the door open to the family room where the kids kept drilling their Koranic recitations; their incomprehensible words reduced to a messy murmur that allowed me to tune it out. Generally, I was focused on my homework and put the kids out of my mind. Occasionally, Nadia’s more even-keeled voice would break the murmur to correct an error and some fragmented thoughts would drift into my conscious mind. Funny how thoughts drift.... Some verse I heard stateside about “all God’s children;” and a memory from early elementary school when I went to the North Carolina State Fair and saw a fieldtrip of severely handicapped teenagers that led to a strange and unforgettable revelation that there must be tons of disabled people that I never saw; that probably rarely left their homes. I wondered what their lives were like; they seemed so foreign to me.

All of a sudden the kids were quiet. I poked my head out and Jane stood on the sofa. She cranked up the volume of her voice and managed to get through whatever verses they were that she was trying to get through with only a couple of words that Nadia filled in. Everyone clapped and she took a bow and hopped off the sofa. I gave her a thumbs-up. Then, beaming, she stuck out her tongue and bobbled her head back and forth and pointed at herself; gave me a thumbs-up and walked out the front door. I guess that’s Jane for ya.

Morocco Gaza Articles

Early this week I wrote an article on the Moroccan response to last month's war in Gaza but was just now able to successfully get it online. The article is available here: http://blogalviews.wordpress.com/2009/02/13/gaza-abroad-reflections-from-morocco/

The good news that came of the delay in getting it online is that an excellent and very related column was written in the middle of the week, it's text is here: http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/90457

An Almost-Kick of Reality

If I was beginning to feel disconnected from the rest of the world, it came to a sharp halt on Tuesday. In fact, I almost tripped over it. There is a particularly lovely and bustling part of an open-air market that I had my eyes fixed upon as I headed down the hill from the institute where I am studying to the hotel where I am staying this week. I was thinking it was strange that I hadn’t read the news or exchanged emails since arriving. I wondered how the rest of the world was doing but I was detachedly reflective, anticipating the entirely foreign surrender that the market still offers my unaccustomed senses. Mildly bemused by the thought of my known, displaced world but excited about the new world I would once again find in the market, I almost stumbled.

I about tripped over the naked half-foot of the napping beggar leaned up against the wall of a store selling grains, which had an open front and cloth awning that faced the alley. As I hopped out of the way to avoid kicking him in step, I looked down. The beggar’s foot ended at the arch and had pieces of both deep red and bright white flesh stretched across it awkwardly, as if the skin itself was trying to imitate a tightly wrapped Ace bandage but changing colors – red to white – at each new layer. Flies hovered to buzz about where the toes should have been; inches above where the abrupt stub was. A film of grayish street grime that was clearly not being absorbed into the wound gave his injury a matured appearance but the vibrancy of the scarlet tissue and the flies gave the conflicting impression that it was recent, or maybe infected. A short strip of what I can only describe (without any medical expertise) as exposed muscle connected his heel to his outstretched, snoozing calf. And then I was four yards ahead, just then actually processing the flash image that I had instinctively reacted to; dodged, as if it had been a cat or a dead squirrel or a tennis ball that had rolled across my path in the street.

As I descended on the market, the vendors calling out in a language I did not understand to purchase a meat I did not recognize by sight or by smell with the dirhams (Moroccan currency) I am still slow to count, I remembered something I might have forgotten: poverty is poverty, everywhere. It has a reductive simplicity.

I don’t want to say that that baseness of poverty is something reassuring but there is certainly something fundamentally human about what it evokes and this feeling necessarily transcends both time and place in its intimate familiarity. For me, when so abject as to be physically flaunted, poverty delivers a punch of intense emptiness to the gut and then the mind, which feels more blank than empty. Then my head gets a little dizzy and my stomach a little nauseous.

It is a feeling of deep grief that has no outlet, perhaps because it cannot cast directed blame for the observed condition that should not be, but this feeling knows that what it is reacting to must be somehow unforgivable. At its essence, it is tragedy. And the feeling snaps me back to a market in Metapan, El Salvador where an old woman with no hands or feet crawls around with a can tied to her wrist for pedestrians to drop change into; to the industrial streets of Xela, Guatemala where orphaned Mayan children extend filthy hands and beg for “un Quetzal, solo un Quetzal;” to the squatter’s village of Hugo II in Puerto Rico where men lie passed out drunk with a cardboard sign and a plastic bag atop their bellies asking for kindness and assuring blessings for it; from Panama City’s coastal sidewalk to the mountain town of Chiapas in Mexico and now in Rabat, Morocco two blocks from where I type, poverty sickens me in the same way. Poverty is poverty, everywhere. Simple as hell.

There is something tragically human about its prevalence but inspiringly human in what it seems to cause inside of those who process it (out of shock or as a conscious choice); that this is how it should NOT be. And because poverty is poverty everywhere, maybe the world and people are the world and people everywhere.

Sliding between the Moroccan market crowd, I saw a local couple in traditional dress link arms. When I inhaled, I noticed that the smoking meat on the market’s fires smelled less like the exotic spices in which it had been marinated and more simply like meat grilling above a charcoal fire.

First Impressions

Hope everyone is well. I have been in Rabat, Morocco for just five days now. Here are some first impressions of things I have been paying a little bit of attention to and hope to explore in more depth (in no particular order):

WOMEN This is one of the cultural differences that I had anticipated being most intrigued by prior to coming and I am extremely interested in their place and function in the local culture and how women perceive this situation themselves. I am sure I will make this a theme in thought and writings, extending that to this blog. The bottom line for my first impression of women in society here is simply that it is more complex than I had thought. I don’t know enough about this yet so I’ll just relate what I have observed on the surface: Women seem to dress in a wide range of clothing. I can detect no set pattern; those that look more black-African (Sudanese, for example), more French-white or more Arab all seem to be equally likely to dawn a hijab (head scarf) or wear stylish Western garb or a full face covering, for that matter (although in the case of the full face covering I’d say that this is only about 1 or 2 in 10 women that I’ve seen; more in the old city wear it; more Arab-Spanish looking; usually 40+ in age). These inconsistencies also transcend generation. There’s no set pattern. All women, however, do absolutely seem to be making some kind of a statement with their dress choices. But wearing a hijab could be a conservative statement or a radically independent statement; political, social or religious, it seems; or just a fashion statement, as I saw one chick wearing hot pink shoes and a matching hot pink hijab. Briefings on current events and politics this week have focused more than I had anticipated on an Islamist Awakening throughout universities in the country and this seems to have some bearing on women’s dress. Many young people are aspiring to a pan-Arab-Islamic identity that extends to all facets of life (political, social, economic alliances) strong enough to offer an alternative to the “democracy” offered by the West that is seen here as imperialistic in the Middle East and surrounding regions. A return to Islamic values and the hope for a more pan-Islamic identity also addresses the search and need for a political system that will transcend the corruption of national politics that defined the second half of the twentieth century here under King Hassan II. In this way, young, educated, often pro-feminist women often wear the hijab, it seems, as a way of identifying with all or some of the ideals of this Islamist Awakening, which can and often does include an element of nationalism.

POLITICS I had not realized the totality of the power of the monarchy until coming. But Mohammed VI, 36 years old and king since 1999, seems determined to be a people’s king and to move away from the corruption and egoism of his father, Hassan II, who made Morocco famous for its human rights abuses throughout his four decade reign. Mohammed VI has been seen kissing children in the street and visits the sick and elderly in hospitals yet rarely makes a public speech. He loves to Jet Ski and we saw the Jet Ski club he sponsored the construction of along the river in Rabat. It is nice! He has done a lot to liberalize trade with the West, especially the U.S. and some speculate he has aspirations of bringing Morocco to a place where it might eventually have a shot at membership in the EU. At the same time, he is dependent on many Islamic countries, namely the United Arab Emirates and the Saudis for much economic aid and political solidarity. He needs to please both Europe and the Middle East while modernizing without losing tradition; the popular cultural hopes of his people (which I think could be oversimplified to be: modernize without losing tradition), over 75% of whom have a satellite dish and over 90% of whom are Muslim. He is infinitely more supported and loved than his father (it could be said his father was a Machiavellian and that he is not) and Mo VI has done much to try to balance this modernity/traditional thing. In 2003, for example, he changed the family code section of the law to grant many more freedoms to women. His approach was essentially to have scholars read the religious texts and if anything was explicit, keep it as law; if it was open to interpretation, secularize/liberalize it. This was extremely popular in many cities and in educated circles and among women and in Rabat 500,000 demonstrated support by celebrating in the streets. Islamists in Casablanca, alternatively, organized a demonstration in protest of more than a million strong on the same day and denounced it. The King has a very tough job, both as Commander of the Faithful (a lineage traceable back to the Prophet) and as ultimate political authority. In a sense, his challenge and the challenge of Morocco is as I expected and largely why I came here: Morocco can be seen as a microcosmic example of the socio-political clash between “the West” and the “Arab-Muslim world;” it must reconcile modernity and tradition to be at peace with its citizens and its international partners, broadly defined. Simultaneously, this question is emerging on the world stage: how will the world reconcile the two identities that seem to be at odds; East/West, Modern/Traditional? The balancing act is certainly interesting to watch and hopefully there are lessons to be learned here for how to walk a line that fosters mutual-enhancement for both sides. We’ll see.

RELIGIOUS LIFE Religious life is not as “crazy” (noticeably permeating, fanatical, total) as I had expected but I expected madness by this definition. The call to prayer five times a day is rather neat – megaphones throughout the city ring with the very guttural Arabic prayer notes sung out. Many people clear the streets and go into Mosques. It’s rather beautiful. It would be hard to be here for long without believing in some sort of supernatural force; the people commit to a faith so completely and totally that their experience of finding truth in it would be impossible, at least for me, to deny. This truth, framed as supernatural, must then be supernatural… or something. Naming it is not as important to me but in recognizing that it exists for them, I find some truth in the existence of that force here: their rituals and worship are very powerful. Local traditions reflect the Islamic religion but I am not so familiar with the Koran or Haddith as to pick up on it always; for example how people wash their hands and when (very well and frequently but it is ritualized…). I think this sort of deeper observation will come with time and study. What little I know of the language is totally inseparable from its religious context. Nearly everything seems to end, one way or another, one form or another, with “praise be to God.” The two most common male names are Mohammed (the Prophet’s name) and Abdul-something. I recently learned that Ab means “servant” and del means “of” and then the “something” is nearly always one of the 99 names for God. For example, the director of the CCCL (institute where I am studying) is Abdelhay; Servant of the Living. I will explore the topic of religious life extensively this semester; the first impression is just that it is not as in-your-face as I had expected but more subtly total in its permeation, which is, again, total, extending to all facets of social, political, economic life.

HOT TOPICS IN MOROCCO/RABAT
-Internationally: Last month’s events in Gaza have been a hot topic here. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated support and solidarity for the people of Gaza. The King has focused on it most as a humanitarian crisis and has made no comment but did send aid and received 100 or so victims in Rabat’s military hospital. Two shops on the way to my school that sell flags are thickly adorned with layers of the Moroccan and Palestinian flags; no others in sight. I was asked to write an article on Moroccan perceptions of what has been going on in Gaza for a Macalester publication and am capitalizing on it as an opportunity to find out more. I’ll post a link and perhaps a copy of the article on this blog early next week.

-Nationally: Recent university grads have taken to the streets self-advocating for government jobs. Although government jobs don’t pay as well, the benefits and securities provided by such work is in high demand, particularly and Western economies go down, and the young and educated want to participate in public service, it seems. Demonstrations that hope to inspire more hiring of this recent-grad demographic are happening several times a month and range in size but are often overwhelming and broken up by police, who, as my prof. said, “really try to discourage them from coming back…” by beating the crap out of them. We’ll see how things plays out.

-Locally: The Bouregreg Project is a project along the Bouregreg River, which cuts through Rabat. Billboarded walls along the river hide the development of a major construction project but show in photographs what the King and developers hope will be the final result: a Riviera-esque atmosphere attracting the region’s wealthiest. Developers from Dubai head the project and the King took a major active roll in attracting this foreign investment. Public feelings about this step towards “modernity” are mixed.

PROGRAM/PERSONAL The program is great. Pretty much exactly what I wanted. The students studying with me are bright, interesting and interested. Much like those who surround me at Macalester. The host institute for my SIT (School for International Training) program is called the Center for Cross-Cultural Learning and is housed in a four-story gorgeous mid-1800’s Andalucian home in the heart of the medina (old city; alleys, etc. Google Image Search: “Rabat Medina” and you’ll get the idea!). Professors are, so far, phenomenal; all have PhDs from U.S. universities so know the American culture and language well which seems also to well position them to translate Moroccan culture and society to this audience. The primary seminar I am taking is an overview called “Culture and Society” and is team taught by two professors; a political scientist (founder of the institute, head of this program for 17 years, member of Moroccan Human Rights Commission) and a cultural studies specialist (also excellent but know him less well so far). This seminar will be composed of 21 lectures; 10 of which will be by guest specialists (embassies speaking on relations, women on women, religious authorities, etc). We also have four conferences (human rights, politics, etc) and a number of excursions to different places, ranging from the highly cultural to the more “fun” (“to show internal diversity of Morocco” which extends to stuff like riding camels for a day in the Sahara). I am journaling regularly so will include more information in blog form about what I am up to as it happens. For an overview of my program, check out: (LINK) The other major component of my program is 3 hours of intensive Arabic (Modern Standard rather than the local dialect, darija) each day, five days a week.

… well, those are some first impressions/thoughts. Be in touch if you wish.

The Blog...

I’ll be in Morocco from the first of February until the middle of May. Check out this blog for my updates, thoughts and impressions or to post a comment yourself.

To read my blog (hard to say how regularly I'll post): http://robatrabat.blogspot.com/
To see pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/rob.jentsch
To correspond: rob.jentsch@gmail.com

"I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity." -Tahar Ben Jelloun, Moroccan writer & poet