Tafilalt Part II

The sickness that has been plaguing probably the majority of foreign students here has finally hit me, so I have a little time to write while recovering in bed.

Near the irrigation channel, we walked around the perimeter of a walled "qasr" village. They are built with rammed earth, pise, which helps keep it cool inside. They are built to last about a hundred years. Two curious local boys, Mohamed and Said, began following us and taking pictures of us on their camera phones -- pictures of us taking pictures of their village. (I spoke to them a little in Arabic and found out that they didn't speak any English, so they couldn't understand anything that our professor was saying, but were just hanging out.) Prof. Shoup then pointed out to us a well outside the qasr. Because it's not inside and it is highly frowned upon for women to be venturing out, and little boys are thought to be too unreliable, it is very young girls who are sent to fetch the water. This has a negative impact on girls' education. As we walked past the village to an abandoned dam, we attracted another posse of children. When I asked a few of the girls to take a picture with them, they said no -- in contrast to Egypt, there is a major aversion to photos here, even without people in them. Apparently, many poorer Moroccans believe that tourists are taking photos to show the backwardness or quaintness of their culture. I also spoke to another small boy, perhaps 6 years old (and he spoke good French), who repeatedly asked me for a pen. Little did I know that this was not just a peculiar interest of Ismail's, but that nearly every other child we encountered in Tafilalt would also ask for pens. (If pens failed, candy was second.) "Stylo? Bonbon?" was everywhere.


Our next stop was Sijilmassa, a ruined city now disappearing into the sand that was once an enormous metropolis. It dates from about the 8th century and was the "port" city to Saharan trade, a garden city, the Marrakech of its day. A lot of gold was minted here, but none has been found: like all archaeological sites in Morocco but Volubilis, it is not guarded, and people have been nightdigging at Sijilmassa for centuries. We first saw the crumbling walls of a mosque built by the Alaoui (current) dynasty, which comes from this region and built the mosque atop two older mosques and a patrician home; the visible remains are of a structure built as late as the 17th century, long after Sijilmassa had ceased to be a real power. Adjacent to it was the madrasa, where there were pieces of ceramic and the hint of students' cubicles.



Our final visit of the morning was to a museum inside a restored palace of the sultan, dating to the beginning of the 19th century and taken over by the French as the home of the commander in the 20th century. The people who live in the nearby village are still the descendants of the palace slaves, including the extremely kind elderly caretaker, and are extremely proud of their heritage. The palace is furnished only very lightly now, but we explored the courtyard layout typical of traditional Moroccan homes. We passed through the servants' sitting area, separated from the reception room with a curtain so that the slaves could be listening to be called but always out of sight. Our professors also pointed out the difference in Alaouite and Sa'adian architecture (as we saw in Marrakech): the Alaouites' style was much more subdued, and painted stucco in pastels to cool the eye. There were a few miscellaneous exhibits at the museum, including a pretty wild display of "traditional" wedding clothes of various regional groups, a few manuscript boxes (which are buried by nomads in the desert), and a display of Jewish paraphernalia. The Star of David here is called the "sign of Solomon" and is used by both Jews and Muslims, and was in fact on the Moroccan currency until the founding of Israel; the symbol of Judaism is instead a pair of lions. At the end of our visit, the toothy caretaker in his white djellaba and cap met us with tea and nuts.

(In the foreground is my professor; the caretaker is pouring the tea.)



After a short siesta, we were off on another adventure to another qasr. We briefly walked through the village association, Assidi Touhami. It is an unusually successful example of an initiative to improve grassroots involvement in education and development in villages throughout Morocco. While some have not gotten off the ground, Assidi Touhami has accomplished 100% attendance of girls at school. This is quite a feat in a region where there is a 90% illiteracy rate for women. Legal literacy classes are also offered to women. The local postman and I believe head of the association, was educated outside, and has been very open to visitors like my professor. He is a member of the Maghraoui family, which has lived here for over a thousand years and produced the regional princes in Berber times. There are in fact only 4 family names in this village, suggesting that all these families have been here for centuries. At the entrance of the qasr sat all the crusty village elders. Each of us shook the hand and delivered an "as-salaamu aleikum" to each one before following Mr. Maghraoui inside the gate. It was immediately much cooler and much darker (in fact, it was hard to see anything at all). There were drainage channels in each of the "roads", through which people led their donkeys or (occasionally) passed by on their mopeds. We saw almost no one, though, except for small children, many of whom were little girls headed out to get water. Mr. Maghraoui demonstrated to us a salty well (which we all drank from!), now used for animals, etc. Then he brought us to his own home, the first Moroccan home I've been inside since I arrived. We were led through an entry room with rammed earth floors and walls, a TV, a basin to catch the rain, and mats and pillows for sitting. The next room, where we sat for an hour or so, was the formal living room for entertaining guests. There was a large TV, traditional cushioned bench seating with brightly colored cushions, several bouquets of vivid fake flowers, and several shiny teapots. We were immediately brought almonds and delicious biscuits, and later copious amounts of watermelon. Mr. Maghraoui also poured the tea in front of us, so we could see how it is done: it is a veritable art here, poured back and forth between the cups and the pot, and always poured vertically. After awhile, the females among us were allowed to go meet the women of the family, who stayed hidden from the male visitors. Mrs. Maghraoui and her five children were sitting on the cushions in the entry room watching a soccer match: Morocco vs. Togo. The mother wore a colorful outfit, more or less western in style, inside her own home. She and the children were all very sweet to us, but we were very frustrated by our limited ability to communicate in darija -- we were more or less reduced to asking about the children's ages and the cats. But the opportunity to go inside the qasr, and especially to meet the women of the family, was extremely rare.

This photo was taken in the Maghraoui living room.



TO BE CONTINUED...