NYU Black Renaissance Noire Summer/Fall 2010 | Page 15

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Amina studied Arabic literature at Mohammed V University
in Rabat, the same University that the Francophone writer
Tahar Ben Joullen and the Moroccan feminist Fatema Mernissi
attended. She tells me about her lifelong e?orts to get her
mother over to the mosque where they teach people how to
read and write on certain days, but to no avail. Morocco seems
like the Puerto Rico of the 1930’s and 1940’s, with the many
illiterate people and the improvised favelas. People who do not
read contain and recount awesome, hilarious stories. Listening
to the tobacco workers was part of my childhood in Puerto
Rico. Readers used to come in and read portions of stories to
them every day. They were also very good with numbers and
sang much better than the modern ‘educated’ urban people,
not to mention the long poetry recitals. The jibaro people of
Puerto Rico were great conversationalists during the agricultural
epoch. Since the advent of television, the capacity for memory
has taken a downward dive in cultures like Morocco and
Puerto Rico.
Satis?ed and full, we decide to take a walk through the central
street of the old medina until we come upon the cemetery
and cross it to the other side where we get to the beach area.
Along the waterfront, we ?nd more restaurants and a few
cafés — in Morocco there are cafés even at gasoline stations.
We walk a while on the street, adjacent to the sand, as if
to burn o? some of the food we’d just eaten. I ask Amina why
she doesn’t wear a headscarf, a hijab. She explains that there
is no dress code for women in Morocco. We see many women
with covered faces and headscarves, mostly just head kerchiefs,
‘it’s a personal religious decision left to the women’, she says.
‘Sometimes fathers and husbands impose it. Some women cover
up on Fridays, the religious day of the week, others cover up
during the month of Ramadan’. She tells me, it’s really nothing
to get stuck upon. Some of her girlfriends go out in hijab
with French and Spanish men, who can’t get over the scarf issue,
given that they have discussed everything under the sun like
French literature with its many erotic connotations. Men from
Christian countries sometimes confuse Muslimas with Catholic
nuns, a grave mistake because the overwhelming majority of
women in the Muslim world actually do not wear hijab. Many
traditions claim that human hair contains radiation, potency,
energy and electricity through which good and evil ?uids can
enter. Spaniards know the custom of women wearing kerchiefs
to Sunday mass, a practice known in Latin America and
the Hispanic Caribbean as well. Priests wear zucchetto hats,
Jews wear yarmulkes, Indian Sikhs wrap their hair in turbans —
almost all religions and spiritual practices emphasize the
covering of hair. We come upon a stonewall that makes the
boundary between the sand and the cement of the street look
like a perfect bench, so we sit down to admire the sea in front
of us where swimmers jump along in the rhythms of the waves
while others relax on the sand. Whirlpools of wishes and desires
circle around us and our ?ngers wrestle with each other. In
Muslim countries it is not appropriate to start kissing with your
girlfriend out in the public street. They are more discrete,
occult and hidden from the public eye compared to Spain where
I had seen couples smushing lips, giving each other elaborate
tongue cleanings accompanied with ass and buttock fumbling.

BRN-ISSUE-2-3-2010.indd 14

l
A gate at the Mausoleum of
Mohammed V in Rabat.

If two Moroccans did that, the police would stop them to
ask them if they were married and demand they go indoors
with their foreplay. They would threaten to call the woman’s
father or, worse, her brother to inquire if they knew that the
girl was outdoors making a porno ?lm. Out of nowhere, as
we discussed these things, Amina tells me that men call their
wives and lovers ‘negritas’ in Morocco. Just like in the Caribbean,
they say ‘lovely black one’, even if she is white with auburn
hair. In the background of our discussion we hear the roar of
a gigantic wave. A lone man, who had been sleeping on the
sand, wearing his country-style straw sombrero, is overcome
by the wave and jumps up, drenched and surrounded by the
water. Did it suddenly seem to him that he was in the middle
of the ocean, far o?shore? His hat already taken by the water,
all he can think of now is to run towards the wall, an expression
of panic on his face, Allah, what is this? The whole scene
seems like a scene from a cartoon. We get just a little splash
of water on our shoes.

9/9/10 6:36:45 PM