The Rihla of an American College Student

Today in Contemporary Moroccan History, we talked about a genre of Moroccan travel literature called rihla, which was first used developed by Moroccans to try to write about and share the knowledge they gained while on the Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and later used by Moroccan diplomatic envoys to Europe to describe their experiences in the foreign Christian world.  I won’t bore everyone with the details the rihla writers, but I bring it up because I realized in class that I am experiencing what the Moroccan envoys to Europe experienced 300 years ago – going to a foreign land, with a foreign language and foreign customs and trying to share the experience so that others may share in the knowledge gained from it.  But instead of writing as a Moroccan official concerned with using diplomacy to preserve Morocco’s sovereignty, I’m writing as a poor (although relatively rich by Moroccan standards) college student focused on broadening my understanding of humanity to make my corner of the world a more interesting place.  One of the characteristics of almost all travel literature is comparing where one came from with where one is, so I’ll give it a shot too.   

Over the last week I’ve noticed that the average Moroccan seems to know as much about Christianity as the average American seems to know about Islam.  For instance, one night I met with two of my Moroccan friends, Hamid and Imid, and we eventually got to the topic of alcohol.  I said that I only drink wine at church, which only elicited quizzical looks from Hamid and Imid.  I then tried to explain the concept of Communion to them, but in the end just gave up because it was clear that trying to explain the theological significance of Communion was only making them more confused.  The cross-cultural miscommunication was so bad that I think I’ve convinced two Moroccans that Christians only get together to get drunk on wine and cannibalize the body of Jesus (which is kind of embarrassing since I was the president of the Interfaith Council last year, whose sole purpose is to try to avoid this type of mishap).  However, considering that there are only 25,000 Christians out of 30 million Moroccans, and almost all of them are foreigners from outside Morocco (either from Europe or the rest of Africa), I can understand why the tenants of Christianity are not widely known throughout Morocco.

I’ve also noticed that there is a huge division between what is public and what is private in Morocco.  For instance, when my host mom, Nezha, goes out of the house, she wears a hijab, but when she’s at home among family she takes it off and relaxes inside the private space of the home.  Similarly, windows are smaller in Morocco and are often shut to try to physically separate the private realm of the household from the public realm of everyone else.  With this in mind, I know that I’ve been shoved into the mama Nezha’s family and accepted as one of her own sons because last Friday I invited one of my friends over to have couscous at our house since his host parents both work during the day and can’t prepare the traditional Friday couscous lunch.  Mama Nezha’s mom, Hajja Betu, happened to be staying with us for a few days while she waited to see a doctor, and when my friend and I walked in, she quickly covered her hair before we gathered together to eat.  Hajja Betu has never covered her hair around me (except when she was praying, of course), so this experience was a striking example of the division between public (e.g. my friend) and private (e.g. the family).

Finally, on a lighter note, Yassine, my one year old host nephew, almost knows my name, despite the fact that I dropped him the last time I saw him while bouncing him on my leg.  In many ways, I feel a lot like Yassine right now, because he is just learning to speak and tries to parrot every word that someone says, which is exactly what I do when mama Nezha tells me a new word for something in Darija.  Mama Nezha has also been telling me that it’s getting cold out, which I guess is technically correct since the mid-70’s is cooler than the mid-80’s, but it still feels like summer.  Some people would love having summer 24/7, but not me.  Right now I am craving Fall and would give anything to be transported to southeastern Minnesota to see the colors on the trees just for a few minutes.