The
Human Battles the System, by Ben
Nicholson
Well, I've tried as long as I could to be a
disinterested observer here in Fes. I tend to think that my failure is sitting
here and being emotionally involved. I'm involved mostly because I'm a
Christian, because I have long blond hair, and because there are women in
Morocco. I believe that God called me to stay away from these women, but it's
causing the worst kind of inner turmoil. So I could feel the blood pulsing
through that vein on the foreheads of my host brother and our friends
simultaneously with mine as we sat at a table at the Rock and Roll Cafe the
other day with some young Moroccan ladies.
I can't be sure about what my companions believe about
God as they sit there and gaze at her big brown eyes and her tight black
everything. But I know that she would never fit into that internal scrapbook
next to Mom, sherifa, and Dad, sherif. A force holds the young men back from
this girl who presses hard kisses on our cheeks. The girl with the thin ankles
and the high square heels would come with them for the right kind of invitation,
but what would God say, and what would Mom say?
Despite my tension now, I have hope. A lasting
relationship that could make me stronger in who I am may be right around the
corner. I could bring her home to meet Mom and Dad too. But such is not the case
for my young Moroccan friends. An envoy from God recently told them that there
are no jobs in Morocco. And thus, no respectable interaction with that tall girl
across the table with the red lips is possible.
The Thursday before last, I saw one of my three
Moroccan brothers completely give in. Of the three, Hamza has the least hope
with the most security. He passed the Bacc last year and made a deal with the
Devil to spend the next twelve years of his life in medical school. Does this
mean twelve years of celibacy before he earns a wage and can marry? Hamza gave
that question a fat "no" when he put his leather jacket around the
fattest and most vampire-like of the fickle prostitutes whom we had met.
That Thursday, Jorge (another Dartmouth student), Hamza,
my two other host brothers and I went to the Rock and Roll Cafe on the way to
Cafe Assouan, where I planned to see the girl who had tagged me on the day of
our first disco encounter. We knew that a group of about a dozen girls hung out
there, and all of my companions wanted to stop to see which of the girls awaited
them. Apparently, they hadn't just come to give me support. Much to my dismay,
the girl who I was supposed to be meeting at Assouan at that very minute came
out of the Rock and Roll Cafe with my friends who had gone in. With them came a
girl wearing a shabby, hot pink sweater and looking much like a frog with
lipstick. Feeling incredibly important for having been forgotten, and getting a
better picture of what these girls had planned for us all the time, I
nonetheless let Ilham, the girl who had claimed me, take my arm along the route
to Assouan. Our group of five men walked through the dark, muddy alley and
listened to the complaints of the two girls about how cold it was. Hamza,
looking rather snug in his brother's rich, brown leather jacket marched smoothly
next to the pink amphibian. It hadn't taken much to separate him from his moral
fiber, as after only a handful of complaints, he took off his brother's jacket
and delicately draped it around Barney's cousin. His true desperation became
clearer as the evening progressed. The twelve years in front of Hamza likely
precluded any hope of not going voraciously after girls of this sort. In his
head, Hamza had already given in, as was obvious from the fact that it required
neither beauty nor sweet talk to get him excited that night. Hamza's behavior at
the Assouan removed any doubt that he was just trying to be nice by loaning-his
brother's jacket to the accident from the pink crayon factory, as Jorge called
her. While Ilham explained to me that she was stroking my hands because, "mes
mains ont friods," I watched Hamza periodically try to put his arm all the
way around his pink prey. The girls had occasion to leave the table a couple of
times, and during these intermissions, Hamza told us that he was returning to
school on Sunday and that he wanted to take the pink one to a hotel. I can still
picture Jorge's red-faced recoil and shake of the head at this suggestion. We
poked fun at his very desperate desires, mentioning her beauty, or lack thereof,
and reminding him that, "elle se moque de ton frere." The girls then
returned and the portly pink one continued to make fun of us all, but especially
Hamza's older brother, Hassan, who had acted like a child earlier in the day
while fawning over one of their friends.
By the end of the meeting, I had become torn between
desire for the girl who had been warming me up the entire time and my
self-control and identity. Her petting and her glances had shown me what she was
in the game for. But I didn't have that hard of a time leaving the table. This
highlighted the difference between Hamza and me in our expectations.
Hamza's, educational future had robbed him of any hope
for self-control and unblemished identity. He would return to medical school
Sunday, and he could never satisfy his desires in that prison-like setting.
Twelve years with neither a wife nor the moral reinforcement of his parents
ensured his departure from his family's Muslim identity. "So," he
thought, "Why not now?"
That day, the girls disappointed Hamza. They seemed to
have some high priority obligation and parted from us quickly. But I had seen
that under-the-table tension that-lives in Fes. The academic, economic, and
moral forces that fuel this fire popped out at me because of Hamza's situation.
He has chosen economic security, but he's now paying the academic and moral
prices; he sacrificed the surest way (staying at home and looking for a wife) to
remain true to the religion of his background, which he would never deny to
pursue economic security through higher education.
I can see such considerations weighing heavily on the
hearts of my Moroccan brothers and forcing the decisions that they make about
their relationship to the opposite sex. Higher education, economics, and moral
traditions are defining their interactions with women. All of these factors also
make inevitable the existence of a large number of unmarried young ladies, who
can find jobs even less easily that men, inevitable. The beginning of the death
of the hijab accelerates the changes that have been brought on by new economic
and educational standards. These changes in Morocco make the existence of women
who exploit the man's situation to fulfill their monetary needs all the more
likely.
My three Moroccan brothers have each shown me a
different approach to handling the tension between traditional morality (or
religion) and their male desires, which in each case are shaped by economic and
educational pressures. I have seen more of myself in Hassan, Hamza's older
brother who failed the Bacc and still lives at home. I've seen him grovel at the
feet of the gold-digging disco girls while holding them in disdain. I've also
seen his eagerness to feel important to a respectable, traditionally moral girl.
He is a child among the players and longs to be respected by the pure. I
identify with him, not because I am utterly out of control with the girls of
experience, but because I let their physical liberties cloud my decision making
and because I search for individual loyalty and attention from a woman that
cannot be found among the gold- diggers. When I saw Ilham just the other day in
a man's car, I couldn't help but feel generic and common. I had craved and
absorbed the attention that she had given, not because of anything particular to
me, but because I seemed a big target.
Hassan, having failed the Bacc, faces an indefinite
period of study and wait before he can work or marry. This seems to correspond
with his more hopeful desire to develop relationships with respectable women,
marriage material. Living at home, he must face the moral demands of his Muslim
parents every day, and the conflict between his moral upbringing and his waiting
and his desires manifests itself more clearly than in Hamza.
The Monday afternoon after our first disco encounter
with the lady players, I decided to honor the appointment that Ilham had
suggested to me the day before. Jorge went with me, as we hoped that the 2:1
ratio would send a message and soften her expectations. I really just wanted to
talk with her and I had nothing to lose in returning. So Jorge and I found
ourselves walking up the stairs at the Rock and Roll Cafe that Monday, and much
to our surprise, there sat Hassan on the top floor of the cafe with Kika,
greeting us with a guilty smile. We said that we thought that he was at school,
as he had indicated earlier in the day to Jorge and his family. With a sour
look, he replied, "I have school for only one hour. It does not matter.
Hassan sat at a table adjacent to us wearing the leather jacket that his brother
would soon loan to the pink panther. From this meeting, the tension began to
build.
Jorge and I sat with llham. I took my "nothing to
lose" approach to the table and asked candid questions about her family,
her life, and her goals. At this point, my suspicions about these girls were
just beginning to rise to their current level. Of course 11harn painted a rather
rosy picture of herself which was not entirely unbelievable. However, her
mystery fell off the side of the table the moment that she said "Oui, j'ai
deja trouve un travail, mais j'ai demande trop d'argent pour eux."
Everything she had said became lies, and I tensed up, knowing that I wouldn't
satisfy my goal of a civil conversation. I didn't want to talk anymore.
This new attitude removed me from my situation enough
to see the termination of the day's Hassan-Kika talk. As if we were descending
into the hot tub together, I could see the blood creeping up Hassan's neck
simultaneously with the blood in my own. He was coming to his own realizations.
Kika lunged forward like a snake each time that she talked to him and turned her
head when she finished speaking, slowly moving backwards. Hassan responded
infrequently with pursed lips. He was far from satisfying the desires that had
led him intermittently to hold out his arm around her previously. He began to
look to Jorge and me with sad disappointment and high, pulled in lips.
Kika stood up to talk to her friends at another table,
and Hassan left their table to talk to us. I think she is bitch," he said.
He just couldn't get the kindness or the security out of her that he had gambled
for in lying to his parents about his whereabouts. Her coldness disgusted Hassan.
It mattered little to him that she was beautiful.
Hassan's goals and expectations about women clearly
differed from Hamza's. His short-term goals corresponded with the life situation
in which economics and education had put him. Hassan's failure of the Bacc
placed him in a lower-commitment educational track, and thus his ability to find
a job and marry becomes more nearly a function of the faltering economy than in
the case of his brother in medical school. Also, not having the Bacc keeps
Hassan in Fes under the supervision of his parents, and hence he has to face
morality every morning at the breakfast table while at the same time being
entitled to more hope for marriage than his brother. Cultivating lasting
relationships with upstanding women could be fruitful for Hassan. Nevertheless,
he continues to look for love in all the wrong places.
Jorge and I questioned Hassan about why he had lied to
return to that girl, after calling her, "not very nice, I think," the
day before.
He replied, "Just to sit with her and to be
amused." But clearly, he was not entertained by whatever earned her the
"not nice" and "bitch" labels. This pointed to a conflict
within Hassan, and one that I assume is very much like the one that I
experienced before returning to see 11harn that Thursday. Hope and emotional
need battled hormones and physical desire in the decision-making tug-of-war in
our brains. The restraint side psyched itself out for the victory with the hope
that it saw. Moral love still seemed real and attainable. The reality of the
purely physical had brought pain to us. It could still be better; somewhere,
bodies still come in the same package with love.
Since parting from Kika, Hassan has met a tall,
big-hipped girl with a cute, short, round hairdo. Miriam's family, as explained
by Hassan, is of a rather recent Middle Eastern background. They're pure Arab,
and supposedly have higher moral standards. Hassan tries to meet her by waiting
outside of her gym to meet her or by setting up another out of the way meeting
place.
He described their meetings as being limited to talking
and going to "take around." Hassan described to us the racing of his
heart when she took his arm and how his eyes rolled back in his head the first
time that he saw her in Western clothing. She melts him. He has such excitement
about their meetings that he has been known to jump up and down and yell. Hassan
enjoys her attention and respect. The conflict and pain that the prostitutes
brought to his heart are missing at this level.
Hassan has gone in the opposite direction of his
brother. The economic and educational system have yet to rob his hope for love
and moral integrity. While the future is ill-defined for him, there remains the
possibility that he could find a job in two years and his budding love could
make all the difference in the world. Two very separate roads to the future are
defined by these brothers: Hamza is navigating the path to security but faces
construction in the road in the form of moral redefinition, while Hassan is on
an uncertain magic carpet ride, full of unfulfilled hope. So while discussing
the possibilities of the future with my host brother, Faical, who is in his Bacc
year, I had to hold myself back from throwing out some of these road signs that
I have seen. His emotions are so much harder to see than the others, and so much
talk can add to the piano on his back, the Bacc.
Faical has a girlfriend in Casablanca and carries her
picture in his wallet. He indicated that he saw her about once a month during
the summer. He has yet to show interest in any girl since I have known him, and
has even put up fronts to shield his interactions with women. Maybe because of
his girlfriend, or possibly because he knew more than us about the disco girls,
he locked himself out of the conversation the first day that we met with these
girls by saying that he is American. His bright white skin let him get away with
it, but subsequently, he felt it necessary to speak bad Arabic and to refrain
from his broken English, effectively silencing him. This move may just be the
beginning of the defense mechanisms that he puts up to protect himself from the
torture of these workless years ahead.
Upon his failure of the Bacc, Faical would begin
working for his dad, a silver craftsman and building developer. This would open
the door to love quickly. But he envisions himself walking down Harnza's road.
Only one of about a hundred conversations has covered the possibility of
failure.
Faical wants out of Morocco in the worst way. He talks
about paying the $2000+ to go on a language study program to the United States
and trying to escape the return. The most likely scenario upon his success on
the Bacc puts him in a European country for the next four years, or more. His
success and his decisions will determine his situation next year, which will
then affect the likelihood of his future adherence to his Muslim principles.
Copyright Ben Nicholson 1997. All rights reserved.
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