NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2010 | Page 11
l
Decorative green door of a
residence among the alleyways
leading to many homes all
with different unique doors.
The women of Morocco are ?nally making a percentage of the
political fabric in the meaningless parliament; meaningless
because the king controls the whole government. What the king
says, overrides, there is no dialogue, this is the way it is.
However, the current king, King Mohammed vi, has an open
mind and is innovative. Many advances have been made
under his rule, especially for women. They now have a similar
divorce procedure as in the United States. Women are free
to initiate divorce. Women also make up a large percentage of
the professional class as there are lots of women doctors, lawyers
and university professors throughout Morocco. Mohammed
and I laughed toward a second beer, recognizing the madness
and surrealism of our respective countries. We heard the ship’s
horn as we arrived in the port city of Tangiers.
10
I had been content with reading the American writer Paul
Bowles, his books ?lled with Moroccan peoples and landscapes.
Bowles translated the oral stories of the Moroccan story-teller
Mohammed Mrabet from the local Meghrebi Arabic dialect
into English, turning out handsome little books, published
through Black Sparrow Press in Santa Barbara, California. Of
course one has to ask how much of the tempo and styling is
the work of Bowles and how much derives from Mrabet, but
for his e?orts alone, Paul Bowles should be congratulated for
making so much every-day Moroccan life available to English
readers. I should also mention, though, that many writers and
intellectuals have strong opinions, both in favor of and against
his presence. Tahar Ben Joullen, for example, considers Bowles
a colonialist. Writers from Arabic countries do not write in
native dialects, but almost always in Classic Arabic, which is
also the language of the educational system and the
newspapers and magazines.
The white houses rose up, lined up along the streets, streets
are like cli?s in Tangiers. The old medina is elevated and I
learned later that some streets have stairs. The city was once
divided into French, Italian and Spanish enclaves as it was the
domain of several European nations with an international
assortment of merchants and eccentrics, busily tra?cking
in the port. Here and there you could still see crumbling ladies
from Spain and old Italian gentlemen lingering in dusty
quarters. There was the Teatro Cervantes, built by the Spanish,
where they once performed zarzuelas (Spanish opera), and
I saw that it was still in use.
BRN-ISSUE-2-3-2010.indd 10
Morocco gained its independence in 1956 and has since slowly
gained back most of its territories. Ceuta (Sebta), near the
Moroccan city Tetuan and Melilla, near Nador, are the exception
as they remain under Spanish rule. Mohammed and I toast
our last bottles of Casablanca beer. Morocco is a beer and wine
producing country. We feel warm and happy now, dulzon
they would say in Puerto Rico. The faces of the o?cers who
check our passports after getting o? the ramp look like they
wished they were somewhere else. Mohammed wants me to
come meet his wife and daughter who are waiting at the
entrance gates to the docks. His French wife is a beautiful
blond woman, dressed in a beige dress, his nine year old
daughter with a smile like a new moon standing next to her
mother, wearing jeans, holding a string attached to a blazing
red balloon ?oating above her head. He introduces me in
French as he puts his arm around my shoulder and tells me
to come along to the car with them. Minutes later I am in
the car with him insisting that I be their guest for the night,
which was ?ne with me for my plans had been to get into
a hotel. His wife zigzags through the sea-side boulevard and
we watch the Euro Ferry ship as it gets smaller and ?nally
vanishes when she turns into a side street.
9/9/10 6:35:16 PM