by Annie Hawes
Half way along the balcony a venerable old man in white chèche and snowy jellaba sits sentinel, cross-legged on the ground outside his door, a knobbly stick across his knees, patriarchal beard flowing. He glowers as the kids dash past him, happily chattering, and shouts at them as they run in at the next door. Now, as I squeeze past in my turn, he gives me a sharp whack on the ankle with his stick. I wheel round, shocked, but he just looks straight ahead, as if nothing had happened. Maybe he’s blind? Or did I just imagine it?
We’re already overwhelmed, being greeted by the mother and aunt, exchanging names, getting bombarded with another twenty million questions by the youth, some of whom are sent indoors to bring out sheepskins for us to sit on. Yes, put them there, have a seat, make yourselves comfortable. Our new hostesses were just making tea – will we have some?
Yes, of course we will. Never known to refuse.
I would be lying if I said that our Arabic and Tamazight had come on at all noticeably in the last day or two. And neither Naima nor Latifa speaks more than a few words of French. No chance of Spanish, either, since the Spanish Protectorate stopped, for inscrutable imperialist reasons, just short of Oujda, which was left to the French. Still, we hardly notice the language problem among the twittering of the infants and the various French-speaking adolescent girls who are sorting everything out, keeping order, translating, bringing out the tea things. Our hostesses are excited to hear that Gérard and Guy are actual Frenchmen from France. Whereabouts in France, they want to know, and what is it like? Is it very different from here? Both Latifa’s and Naima’s husbands are there, it’s three years now that they only come home for the French national holiday in August and then go straight back off again to work. And Latifa’s oldest son Ali is there too this year, even though he’s only sixteen, and she hardly recognized him in all his French clothes when he came back in the summer, and he was even talking in a French kind of a way. Would someone who lived there maybe never want to come home to Oujda afterwards? Latifa isn’t sure if it’s Marseilles or Paris they’re working in – are those places very different from one another, then? The three smallest girls are looking on wide-eyed, their gaze moving from us to our translators Zeinab and Aisha, then to Latifa and Naima, as the conversation goes round. They are also clinging onto my hands, taking turns to sit on my lap, and slapping at one another over whose turn it is next. It’s quite hard to concentrate on the conversation.
It’s definitely Marseilles, says Naima. And how she would love to go too! Neither of them has ever been to France – or even out of Oujda, except for the annual pilgrimage to the marabout shrine of Sidi Yahia – but their husbands say that the French government won’t allow them to come over, even for a visit. Is that really true? It’s probably just an excuse for the boys to run around living it up, all men alone, isn’t it?
While Gérard and Guy are breaking it that, alas, it is very likely true that Naima and her sister-in-law would not be allowed to join their husbands in France, even for a holiday, the old neighbour with the beard begins muttering angrily to himself. Nobody turns a hair, though my collection of little girls giggles to one another. He’s a bit past his sell-by date, maybe, and always rambles on like that?
It dawns on me that the man-less life this family is leading, just females, small children and the occasional old age pensioner, is the exact counterpart to the Parisian exile of Uncle Kebir and the boys from Timimoun. The other side of the same coin. Was Kebir married? I don’t think it ever occurred to me to ask him.
Latifa’s and Naima’s husbands – two brothers – are butchers, though, they tell us, and not building workers. But there is no skill in it, not in France, says Zeinab, translating for her mother. Here a butcher is a respected man, because knowing how to kill an animal swiftly, neatly, with no suffering and according to the precepts of Islam is an honourable skill. And then you must know how to section up the meats from the carcass afterwards, and clean the skin for the tanners to make the leather. In France Zeinab’s uncle and her father – and now Ali too – kill thousands and thousands of cattle a day. But you don’t need any skill, that’s why her brother could go, even though he was only sixteen and didn’t know anything. Her father says Ali never will learn anything, either, not in France, because there they just do the same two moves over and over again, bim, boum, bim, boum. And then they throw half the animal away, too.
It makes her father sad, says Aisha, interrupting, and he wants to come home to Morocco, doesn’t he, where he could teach Ali properly, but he can’t, because we need the money, and it’s the Nazrani way, he says, because they have too much and so they always waste half of it. Zeinab, speaking in Arabic, shushes her little sister up and gives us an apologetic grin. I wish everyone here wouldn’t always assume that we agree with the way things are done in the West! But then again, why should they suppose we didn’t?
Latifa tells Aisha to tell us that we must go to the shrine of Sidi Yahia ourselves before we leave. He is a marabout highly regarded by all three Peoples of the Book: Christians, Jews and Muslims all join the pilgrimage to his tomb in the oasis a few miles outside Oujda. His is one of the best moussems ever!
Who can he be? we wonder. We’ve never heard of a Saint Yahia.
Sidi Yahia bin Younes! says Latifa encouragingly.
No. Still no idea. Then Zeinab remembers what we Nazarenes call him: Jean Baptiste.
John the Baptist! Can this be true? But then, why not – I suppose he has to be buried somewhere, doesn’t he? And then, the name ‘John’ is ‘Yannis’ in Greek, isn’t it? So ‘Younes’ would certainly be right.
Zeinab vanishes indoors and comes out with a small brass bowl and a jug, which she fills from the tap on the balcony wall. She trickles water over our fingertips, into the bowl, three times each. You must always wash your hands three times, before you touch food or drink. Aisha puts tea, mint and sugar into the pot; her sister adds the water and stirs, slips it back on the side of the brazier to brew. No men here to perform the tea-ceremony, so anything goes. One of the little ones sets the glasses out.
Along the balcony, the aged patriarch’s angry muttering continues.
What’s he saying? I ask the girls, intrigued.
He probably just wants some tea, says Aisha, an answer that causes her sister to go into fits of laughter. Her mother and aunt join in too, once this exchange is translated to them. Mysterious.
Another couple of neighbours, two middle-aged women, have come along the balcony to join the fun. They squat down next to Latifa, and a lot more giggling goes on. One of them has that Berber tattoo on her chin, the vertical stripe in indigo-blue running down from her lower lip. And two little ones up on her cheekbones, too, like tiny palm-leaves. Once you get used to the idea, they start to look pretty stylish. Even if they are spoiling God’s perfect creation.
The tea brewed, Latifa pours out a glass for everyone, slapping away the hands of the two smaller children, who are hoping to muscle in on this grown-up treat in the general confusion. Thank you, we say: shukran. Shukran! repeats Zeinab, laughing. Shukran! says Aisha too. Another outbreak of giggling. You sound like the imam, they say, preaching in the mosque! Shukran is the classical Arabic word. Maybe they say that in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, but it sounds stuffy and po-faced to Maghreb ears. Here, you wish people a good dose of baraka from God to thank them. Baraka Allahu fik! Say it! Try! Go on!
Another sign of the unorthodox Maghreb take on Islam, evidently.
Now Naima sends Aisha along the balcony with a glass of tea for the old man. More laughter as she nips gingerly in to set it at his knee, whereupon he raises his stick at her, roaring something – wish I could understand Arabic – while she darts back out of reach and runs to throw herself into our midst, breathless and laughing. Latifa, peeking through her fingers at this, clutches at Naima’s arm, and they both go off into more fits of helpless laughter.
A violently disposed old nutter, then. Maybe he really did whack my ankle on purpose? I suppose they have to l
ook after him anyway – those Pillars of Islam again. I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for him, all on his own down there, with half a dozen women entertaining themselves, apparently, at his expense. I sip away at the hot tea, fending off as best I can the many tiny hands that are busy investigating everything about me – from my hair to my watch to my clothes to my footwear – while Gérard and Guy get involved helping the two slightly older ones, Naima’s children, who are trying to halve and stone a bag of apricots into a bowl. They’re to go into tonight’s chicken tagine – why don’t we come back later and eat it with them?
I’m doing my best to join my hostesses in completely ignoring the old man with the beard, but it’s not easy. The tea seemed to mollify him for a bit, all right, but then he went back to his muttering, which he is now interspersing with a sort of doom-laden chant. Suddenly, banging his stick on the ground, he lets out an almighty roar.
He wants someone to go and help him up, says Zeinab, causing yet more naughty-schoolgirl laughter. He can’t do it by himself any more. Not even with the stick.
Ah, I see, I answer, untruthfully, wondering why, in that case, nobody is showing any sign of going to give him a hand. Shall I go and help him up, maybe? I ask.
This idea is so hilarious that it has everyone rocking in the aisles. Our hostesses decide to let us in on the secret. The angry old man is no mere neighbour, but Latifa’s and Naima’s father-in-law, the children’s grandfather. And it is our own presence here that is making him so angry. Women are not supposed to invite unknown strangers into their homes, especially not unknown men, though probably unknown Nazrani women come a close second. Grandfather has been ordering his family to remove us from the premises immediately, ever since the moment we arrived. He has now moved on to reciting verses of the Koran that deal with the topic of immodest and insubordinate women, and how badly they will be punished – both by their husbands when they return, and by God in the hereafter. They didn’t want to tell us what he was saying, in case it spoilt our visit.
The chivalrous Guy starts getting to his feet. We should leave right away . . . we’re really sorry if we’ve caused any trouble . . .
But Latifa, still laughing, grabs Guy’s sleeve and pulls him back down onto his pile of sheepskins.
She doesn’t want you to go, translates Aisha. None of us want you to go! Why should we take any notice of him? What harm are we doing?
And what is he going to do about it, anyway? asks Zeinab. He can’t even stand up without our help! He’s got no other men to back him up – they won’t be home for five months! They may shout a bit when they hear that we had foreign guests, but it won’t last long, will it, because they miss our mothers too much to be horrible to them, and they’ll be off back to France in no time!
Strange. Now that I know exactly what the family patriarch is saying, I find it surprisingly easy to ignore him, just the way his womenfolk do.
Another hour of translation and miming, of children’s antics, pandemonium and hilarity goes by: and eventually we stand up to take our leave. The family are starting to get their meal ready – vegetable preparation takes place out here on the balcony, it seems, as well as tea-making – and we need to go and find a hotel before it gets much later. I don’t care if it’s a waste of precious money, I am going to take a proper shower and sleep in an actual bed, with actual sheets, at last.
A shower? But no, say the girls. I must come to the hammam with them! They will all be going this afternoon. It’s only round the corner – the women’s session goes on till six. Brilliant idea. I will come and meet them there once we’ve found somewhere to sleep.
Heading off along the balcony, I put on a burst of speed as we pass the bearded-patriarch danger spot. Not fast enough, though. My shin gets another whack anyway, much to everyone’s entertainment. Outrageous that he only goes for me! What about the men? Why doesn’t he give Gérard and Guy a good rap on the kneecaps? Surely they’re more of a threat to his family’s honour than I am? As usual, women are the easy target!
The mirth from the immodest, insubordinate females above is still echoing down the stairwell as we make our crablike way back across the square, high-stepping between the braidmakers’ webs.
As we wend our way back to the ville nouvelle, Gérard gets very excited about this encounter. Maybe, he says, some small positive thing has come out of all this migrant-worker business – if it’s actually allowing Muslim women to stand up to their patriarchal menfolk!
I hope he is right. The man-free life Latifa and family are leading certainly seems to have its liberating side. But I have a horrible feeling that the tearing apart of all these families, women at home, men abroad – especially when it’s been going on for generations, the way it has here – could make the Islamists’ ideas more attractive, not less. Especially when it seems that it’s the power of the uncaring, money-grubbing Nazrani, yet again, that has created the situation. I don’t find it at all hard to imagine that women, as well as men, might compare the harsh insecurities of modern life with the comforting certainties of a lost Islamic idyll, their men back at home, real husbands once more, taking charge of the duties and responsibilities of family life, caring for wives and children. Latifa and Naima were positively delighting in the thought of how angry their husbands would be over their escapade with us lot, weren’t they? They miss normality the way anybody does, even if normality isn’t perfect. I suspect they would go happily back to the patriarchal past, just the way English and French women did after the last war, if only they could have their husbands back for good.
And then, looking at the situation from another angle, I’m sure the reactionary old stick-wielding patriarchs are gathering plenty of put-the-women-back-in-their-place ammunition to share with their absent sons when they return, if the sort of disrespectful behaviour we saw today is being repeated all over the country!
The hammam is a wonderful place, all dry heat and white steam, blue tiles, vaulted ceilings and deep arches, a combination of steamy gossip-shop – not that I have any idea who we’re talking about – Turkish bath and intimate do-it-yourself beauty salon. There must be thirty or forty of us in here, stripped down, every conceivable age and size of woman, all of us giving one another a hand with back-scrubbing and shampooing, much naked giggling. Extraordinary to step from streets where hardly an inch of female flesh is to be seen, and crush into this intimate space crowded with naked curves. My bosom, as usual, is very interesting for those inscrutable North African reasons, even though, as I’d suspected, it doesn’t look any different to anyone else’s. Somehow, due to the self-consciousness brought on by this unaccustomed amount of public attention being paid to my breasts, and to having to concentrate on the intricacies of the hammam ritual itself, I don’t notice what their bras, if any, are like. I certainly do notice, though, that many of them depilate their whole bodies – including their pubic hair. First into the changing room, where you undress and collect a pair of buckets. There are a surprising number of children in here, little boys too. They only get banished to the Men’s Event when they are drawing close to puberty. What a memory for every young boy in this land to have – a lost paradise of voluptuous female nudity!
Now through to the hottest room, where the water cistern is. Fill your bucket – using the right hand only on the tap, remember – then claim your place in the middle, slightly-less-hot room. Here you splosh a bit of water on the floor where you’re planning to sit, which I can’t get right at all, much to everyone’s entertainment, since I have no notion what I’m trying to achieve, or indeed what I’ll be doing in it once I’ve earmarked my place. The rules, once explained, are perfectly sensible: you just have to make sure not to sit where you’ll be in someone else’s stream as they wash, or where your used water will go on them, since it all drains down to the plughole at the centre of the tiled floor.
Now, out comes a tub of silky black mud. We butter ourselves and one another all over with this extraordinary stuff – including the hair – then tak
e our seats on the floor and relax. And sweat. And sweat some more. Now my hostesses and I take turns at scrubbing one another down with a giant ball of something that looks like baling twine. An amazing amount of dirt and dead skin comes away. Into the hotter room; another scrub-down. My turn to scrub Naima now – and I’m not doing it hard enough, it’s not supposed to be just a tickle! There are some ladies in here doing the hands-and-feet hennaing popular with a lot of older Maghreb women. They must, I think, henna the soles of their feet and the palms of their hands every single time they come to the hammam, because they are dyed a deep burnt orange colour, and the tops of their fingers too, right down to the first joints, giving their nails that intriguing sixty-a-day amber colour. Zeinab tells me that everyone is hennaing all at once now, because you can’t do it during Ramadan. Henna is for victory and for rejoicing, not for praying and fasting. And it doesn’t only colour your skin, it makes it stronger and stops it getting rough when you do a lot of washing, or hard work on the land. Also, contributes Aisha, you put it on newborn babies’ heads, so they won’t be taken back from you by the envious djinns.
And on the bottoms of your feet, I guess now, because they’re the part that comes closest to the djinns’ home, down in the earth beneath you?
Of course, say the girls.
Latifa and Naima are melting something in a small saucepan over by the Russian-oven-like device that heats the cistern. It makes your hair lovely and shiny, they say – I must try it too. But what a pity they didn’t think to bring a lemon with them, to help me with those freckles!
Bah.
The stuff in the pan looks like fragments of translucent pale-yellow quartz, except that it’s melting in the heat, so it can’t be. I do know, though, that I saw a whole basketful of this stuff, whatever it may be, in that shop in Tetuan. Yes! Another indecipherable commodity nailed, by use, if not by name. Once it’s melted, you smooth it through your wet hair, wait five minutes, and then rinse it off. And the results are amazing. Unfortunately, I’ve never managed to track it down again. Its Arabic name, unwritable in any alphabet I could read, went in one ear and out the other. Could it have been silicone?