Feminism, Swimming Armies, and the Medina

Today marks two weeks since I left home! This week in Marrakesh has been exhausting but so interesting and exciting. On Monday and Wednesday morning, I ran with my American friends before school to the Menara Gardens. Menara is one of the most beautiful sites in Marrakesh. A giant reflecting pool of white stone stretches the length of a football field, surrounded by lush gardens with hanging tangles of purple flowers. At one end, a weatherbeaten building arches over the pool. The garden does not have the well-kept, clean atmosphere of an American park -- it is a strangely beautiful mix of old and new. At a well-timed history lesson at school that afternoon, I learned that the Menara pool was built to teach Muslim soldiers how to swim. During the Moorish occupation of Spain, unrest prompted Muslim armies to cross the strait of Gibraltar and restore order in Andalusia. However, since the boat ride across the strait was often dangerous due to tempestuous weather and currents, the commanders wanted their troops to learn how to swim before sailing over.  They built Menara and it has been an important site in Marrakesh ever since!

On Tuesday morning we went on a historical tour of the medina. The old city of Marrakesh is walled in by a giant wall of rose stone that matches the hue of the ancient buildings inside. The old neighborhoods inside are beautiful, and some still maintain their traditional function in Moroccan society as small gated communities within a city. We visited a primary school, a wood-worker (who gave me a wooden necklace as a gift!), and a sub-Saharan immigrant who worked in a crumbling stone edifice stoking the fires of the hammam next door and practicing traditional tribal instruments. Seeing these small parts of Moroccan life that are usually hidden behind closed doors to Westerners was an incredibly interesting and wonderful experience for all of us. 

Today, a professor named Fatima Iflahen came to speak with the NSLI group at the CLC. Professor Iflahen is a well-respected member of the elite urban female academia in Marrakesh and she had a very interesting perspective on how traditional Moroccan values influence gender roles today. Since Morocco is a patriarchal society, historically there was a public sphere for men and a private sphere for women. The streets and politics and markets were the man's domain, while the house was the woman's. Today, although the integration of women into the workforce has steadily changed this perception, the traditional cultural stereotypes and practices remain ingrained, consciously or subconsciously, in the psyche of Moroccans. This attitude creates a culture where women are harassed on the street, a practice "justified" in the subconsciousness since traditionally women are entering and invading the "man's" public domain. As an American girl who has never felt truly limited by gender, I find the harassment on the street to be completely offensive and a pure example of men being disgusting. However, although I obviously still do not support the harassment, I feel that I have a better perspective after Professor Iflahen's talk about why this occurs. It is very interesting to understand the deeper societal motives and implications that drive this behavior, and I hope that the Moroccan culture continues to shift away from the street harassment as it has begun to do. 

Her talk serves as an interesting framework to understand the various parts of Moroccan life that I encounter every day. Professor Iflahen described Moroccan culture as "schizophrenic" -- a great example of that is my Arabic teacher Abdullkebir. He is 40, very friendly, dresses in Western clothing, and is very well-educated. On the outside, he appears very Westernized and makes jokes about aspects of American culture that many Moroccans would not talk about. However, he told us today that when he wanted a wife he asked his mother to find him a good wife from a good family. His mother chose a girl, he met her once at a cafe for 20 minutes and they got married a week later! They've been married for 16 years and have 2 kids. Stories like this constantly remind me how different Morocco is from home, and I hope that I will be able to continue to understand the different facets of Moroccan life without judging them through the lens of American culture.