前途: A Year in Morocco

I attended the Fulbright Morocco Research Symposium this weekend. It allowed me to contextualize a lot of anecdotal experiences of mine, as well as place those experiences into a wider conceptual framework. There are several forthcoming entries which will attempt to tease out some of these ideas.

Big words aside (or maybe not), I want to start with the ideas of “modern” and “traditional,” which are frequently employed as lenses to view societies in developing countries. What I don’t want to do is be inflammatory, nor can I classify Morocco as one or the other, nor do I want to suggest that either is more inherently positive or negative than the other, because that is simply false and an offensive oversimplification of a very complex issue. /disclaimers

Comments from my native-speaking Arabic teachers in university dismissed these concepts of modernity and tradition as Western-imposed divisions of integrated parts of Arabic-speaking societies, and they say that tradition vs. modernity has less to do with how Arabic speakers view their world, and more to do with how Arabic-speaking societies meet their economic needs and day-to-day needs of living.

I don’t necessarily disagree with that, but my experience in Morocco leads me to believe that the concepts of modernity and tradition are culturally important and have an impact on identity, whether explicitly or unconsciously. I also don’t think they are simple opposites, although they can oppose each other, but they are ultimately much more complicated. To prove this to you, dear reader, I am going to examine a few areas of life here, the physical makeup of Moroccan cities, food, and dress, and look at how the ideas of modern and traditional are more flexible and can have different connotations in different contexts.

Large Moroccan cities, like those in any part of the world, have various quarters and neighborhoods, each with its own name, geography, and association with social class. Moroccan cities (we’re talking the ones that existed in the time of the French protectorate 1912-1956, like Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech, Fes and others) generally include an old part of the city, which is known as the medina. It is characterized by its inaccessibility to cars; narrow, winding, maze-like streets; walls around the whole quarter; lack of liquor stores; and having a more “traditional” lifestyle and mentality ascribed to its inhabitants. The medina in Fes is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and is the largest car-free zone in the world. Goods make it in on donkeys and small carts, much the same way they have for more than 1000 years. Indeed, structure of the medina makes it an ideal place in which to wait out a zombie apocalypse, provided one is wealthy enough to have stockpiled provisions.

Another important part of major Moroccan cities is the Ville Nouvelle, or new city, which is the name given to the relatively newer, French planned parts of the city, where you can buy alcohol and have a place to park your car close to or underneath your apartment building. Living in these parts of the city today is generally seen as moving away from a more traditional lifestyle and therefore seeking a more “modern” one (but certainly still Muslim), and has a connotation of wealth. This is not to say that there are not wealthy medina families—they live in splendid riyads with dazzling interior decoration—what I refer to is people’s perceptions of each place and how its inhabitants live.

It is equally important to note that my description of these perceptions are based on my life in the north of Morocco, which is more Francophone and more closely connected to Europe because of geographic, political, and economic proximity. That is to say that those in the north deal not just with European tourists, but also with French-speaking European intellectuals in connection with government, science, economy, development, etc.

Going beyond these physical divides of urban neighborhoods into old and new, Moroccans also talk about two concepts, “bldi” and “rumi.” Bldi literally means “of the country,” and refers generally to the countryside, rural (poorer) areas, domestically produced goods, and things that are traditionally Moroccan and not French. Rumi refers to foreign, mass-produced goods, and one is almost always presented with a choice between the two when buying eggs, bananas, French baguettes vs. traditional fry-breads, and almost any other product, including linens, clothing, and many other household items (baskets or Moroccan pottery vs. mass-produced plastic or ceramic bowls, for example).

These concepts do not always oppose each other, however. Bldi, when referring to food, brings about connotations of “organic,” produced sans pesticides, and is seen as healthier and possibly tastier. On the other hand, my neighbor once asked me if the lobby of my Ville Nouvelle apartment looked too “bldi” after she had placed several potted plants there to improve the “ambience” (please pronounce this word as Frenchly as possible). In other words, she was afraid of it looking too much like the countryside.

Rumi referring to foods, by default, includes many products which are not produced in Morocco, like soy sauce and rice noodles, which are available in many grocery stores in the Ville Nouvelle. Now, these products in and of themselves are fairly neutral in terms of healthy vs. unhealthy, but Asian food is seen as a healthy cuisine by many of my Moroccan students. However, when it comes to raw food products like fruits and vegetables, rumi has connotations of being less healthy than its bldi cousins.

We can apply these ideas to language. French, but also to some extent English and Spanish, are seen as more prestigious languages, used especially by the educated and to talk about science, technology, medicine, literature, and economy and to talk to the outside world. The bldi native languages of Morocco, Moroccan Arabic and Amazigh, are seen as less prestigious and for communication among Moroccans. They are not used for writing, with a minor exception of a rare few authors recording Moroccan folk tales and poetry in Darija, which is seen as a revolutionary statement in and of itself. Moroccan rap generally mixes Darija and French, which could be viewed as an attempt to engage both a domestic and an international audience. This is all complicated when you speak Arabic with people and find that their attitude becomes much friendlier and more amicable and less stuck-up than when you are speaking French together. However, you are still told that since you are an educated person, you should really learn French.

Moving to the subject of Amazigh: it has an alphabet, which was codified only recently from ancient alphabets which had fallen out of use. The alphabet is therefore not known and not used by most speakers of Amazigh dialects, including those among my students who speak an Amazigh dialect as their first language. Amazigh is definitely seen as a language for in-group communication, and comments about my interest in learning it are often met with laughter or derision, and an attitude of “Why would you bother wasting your time learning that?” or “It’s too difficult for you!”

Let’s stretch it a little further: Western clothing is worn (at least in the north of Morocco) by the majority of the younger demographic, to go to work and school. Traditional clothing (jellabas) is donned when attending traditional or religious events, weddings, readings of the Quran to commemorate a death, or to and from the hammam. I see women in the large northern cities of Casablanca and Rabat wearing miniskirts and heeled boots, sometimes in headscarves and sometimes without.

I don’t want to open the can of worms that is the headscarf, nor do I want to write a detailed criticism of how women’s clothing is widely perceived by society and individuals as a symbol of their sexual availability (which is a serious problem even in the U.S.). A man’s choice in clothing does not put his reputation at stake the same way a woman’s can and does, and that is a fairly universal experience for women. My point is that, especially for women, this choice to dress in a way which follows Western or French definitions of what is beautiful/fashion-forward and ugly/fashion-backward can be seen as a statement of how certain individuals interpret and define their own lifestyle and social position in Morocco.

On the flip side, a Westerner wearing Moroccan traditional clothing can evoke amusement and feelings of solidarity and pride from Moroccans, but it hasn’t stopped Moroccan men from hitting on a female friend of mine in French. If they thought she was Moroccan, they’d use Arabic, but the point is that Western women, no matter how covered up, are still seen as more sexually available than Moroccan women, and by definition, not subject to Moroccan tradition. This actually has nothing to do with perceptions of clothing and modernity, but with the intersection of perceptions about race, gender, and its corresponding culture, which are all complications of how modernity and tradition are perceived and acted out by individuals.

That is to say, these seemingly opposing concepts of medina/Ville Nouvelle and bldi/rumi and modern/traditional, have loose, flexible, and adaptable definitions which change depending on the contexts in which they are used, and the individuals who use them. Hopefully, insha’allah, I have also been able to convince you that the adjectives “modern” and “traditional” should not be thrown around without thinking a little more critically about them.