January, 1982
D2's autobiographic notes on the Harvard adolescence project fieldwork in Zawiya, Jan '82 to Jan '83. Last update: February 22, 1993: Over to D2's Powerbook 160; 28 Mar 87; 30 Jan 83; 17-Jan-82.
10-Jan-82: I had a dream (several, really) last night [we leave in 17 days, and I spent much of yesterday working on the "person-centered ethnography" part of the field guide—LeVine, Crapanzano, Geertz {now being discussed on WBUR!}] in which we (S, L, and I probably, though I wasn't explicitly aware of them) were in SKZ at Mb's house having a meal. It was as if I suddenly found myself there, had no recall of arriving or being greeted. Mb, Fa, Dr, Kh (Malika's husband), and a number of other family members. Dr was saying something about a book or article he'd been reading, used almost the same words I recalled from something complex and English (he seemed to be speaking Arabic) I'd just read, and several others commented in an informed way. I thought that conversations at our families in the US didn't meet this standard, and I was amazed. I realized that I didn't recall greeting Fa, looked to see how her teeth were, and asked her "kulshi labas?" {30 Jan 83: how revealing this and the one about zenkat razi transformed seem now, given my brooding all year on how low the standards for conversation in fact are in most of the world's villages}
Night of 15-Jan-82 a dream (or a pair of them): We're walking into SKZ, and the open area near the nadi looks much more "modern" (neat, some trees, a couple of vending trucks!). There are several cars full of adolescents cruising around the open area wildly, picking up bags of trash (apparently they're responsible for keeping the area neat!). I then look for the street to M's house (the first one, to the right, heads directly out of town) and find it completely changed: apparently paved, with houses having external porches, flowers and trees. I am amazed at the change, and we walk up the street to find some members of Mb's family (vague) outside. {30 Jan 83: I thought often of this one, while walking through scarcely-changed SKZ, and repeated it to MJ}
Later the same night I dream I'm telling this dream to BH and TH as part of discussing their trip to see us, emphasizing how different the real SKZ is going to be.
February, 1982
04-Feb-82: Rabat: First Moroccan entry
I've plugged the system into the 50hz. wall current, and everything seems to work fine except that the image is a little jittery. Whether this is the cycle difference or an actual unevenness in the current I don't know. I'll run briefly today, then try AID's Apple tomorrow to see whether they experience the same flicker and whether it's helped by a CVT. I'm also keeping my voltmeter on the line, and it shows a steady voltage in the 120- 125 range.
We visited SKZ for the first time yesterday and found all our close friends well and very pleased to see us. The fourteen year old daughter of Mb's sister in Kabar had died earlier in the week (of "mrd sukar," apparently diabetes mellitus), and was buried yesterday. Since everyone was saddened by this and still involved with condolences to the family we came back on the evening train rather than staying overnight as we had intended.
First impressions: things and people looked remarkably the same except for all of our increased age (perhaps most evident in Mb, who had developed rheumatism in his lower legs and is having trouble walking). There is a remarkable amount of new construction both in SKZ and between there and Kabar, where two new schools (a tanawiyya and a technical training school) are underway. The first passage through the village itself was much as I recalled, except that no one recognized us and shouted "Susan!" as formerly, and the area around the nadi has new buildings and an open-air market (somewhat like the dream I had before leaving Cambridge, including a car or two parked in front of the nadi). We surprised Fatna, who said Si Mohamed had almost daily been announcing our arrival since last week. Malika, Fatima, 'Aisha and Sa'id were there (Azziza being in Kabar with 'amntha), and we had first tea and then lunch (rabbit tajine and buqqola), the latter after a brief visit to Drissia, whose legs seemed somewhat better than before. Her daughter Fatima had come to Mb's to get us. Mina hadn't written from Libya since Ramadan but is apparently trying to get permission for herself and her husband to come for a visit. Qasm's son Mjid, aged 15, was also at Mb's before lunch and wanted to take me to his house. We all went after lunch and found Q and mrtu getting ready to go toKabar for the dbu` of a sheep at his sister's (full to him, half to M). We went down to the taxi stop (after a brief stop at the Nadi to say hello to 'Aisha Abbadi and her colleague) with Fatna, Malika, and Sa'id and found Driss there. He seemed very much the old mixture of great cynicism and flashes of humor and warmth. Said he might be in Rabat Saturday and would come by. We spent an hour at the Kabar household and were given a lift to the station by that M'barek and M. Rode back to Rabat with a relative from Kenitra and another who works in a bank in Casa.
March, 1982
29-Mar-82: 11:40 a.m.: I think I’m a hero (if S sees the Fatna teeth through this p.m. we’ll have a two-hero party). Our woodworker neighbor (old) said yesterday they’d been to the baladiya last week, been referred by the governor’s khalifa to the man responsible for health facilities (?), who told them the garbage truck would come [last] Friday. It didn’t. He said they wanted to try again today with a group of 5-6 and one of us. Learning it’s likely be all males, S suggested I go. At 9 a.m. the workman at the woodshop came, said they were ready. I dressed up and at 9:25 the owner and workman (who pointed out to me how the flies spot his products—he seems to do nice work, e.g. a windowed wood cupboard at 6500 rials) and another shopkeeper (from the new east-west row) and I set out, stopping at B-A’s shop to try to persuade either him or Bustha, the next-door neighbor who was standing there, to come along. They declined, as had another neighbor, despite my companions’ effort at shaming. Mb was in front of his house, invited along, declined ("It’s far from me."), then reluctantly came. Mb, the mul wood, and I cought Q’s cab to Kabar (Q seemed glum), waited for the other two (Buzbiba had a letter addressed to #1 from Mrs. Avelsgaard), then walked to the amaliya. We rehearsed arguments enroute and arrived about 10 a.m. Mb talked, we were directed to a man in the hall who said the mul camionat would be there in an hour. We squatted across the street, I made a jaunt to the P.O., and at 10:45 we reentered, it having been agreed by the others that I should talk this time. There was a different shawsh (along with the original one) who knew Mb and on hearing from him our purpose went to the end of the hall and brought back a man in a khaki baseball cap (brim turned up—he could easily have been an American garbage truck driver), who looked at us expectantly/coldly. My companions gestured at me, and I said, roughly, "Good morning, excuse me, my Arabic is weak, I’m an American professor and I’ve come with my wife to live in SKZ. My neighbors here and I live near a dump and we’ve come to ask about the trucks that pick up the garbage. They were said to come every week but it’s been over a month...." He: "Where’s this dump?" Others: "At the Place Moussem." He: "The truck will come this afternoon, about 4:30. We’ll continue to come every day or so." There was some elaboration and several repetitions of the assertion the truck would be here today, and we left with ballcap looking a little peeved and many hurried expressions of thanks. There was no back-clapping, but my companions, especially an older male who’d joined us at the amaliya, praised my Arabic and looked content. The male I couldn’t identify elaborated on his suggestion that there be a demarcated place for garbage further from the houses and an assas to follow wrongdoers home and record their house numbers.
M. stopped at a tooth shop enroute back and agreed to bring F. in this afternoon. Driss was having tea and looking hung-over across from the taxis. There was a funny episode with a policeman which D. said was re selling something D. had. He also said something about Si Mohamed’s exam grades being weak, took us back to Zawiya, gave me [my?] jellaba with a comment about its being his and my wearing it so I didn’t get dirty. He said he might stop by later.
And at about 3 p.m. the orange truck came! Half a dozen men have been raking garbage together, starting about 100 yards away and, hopefully, working their way toward us. they raked and shovelled most of the stuff together by 4:15, when it began to pour (an answer to yesterday’s children’s prayer), and they were forced to leave our patch intact. We’d prepared tea for them, as had the mul hanut up the hill. He commented that God had intervened, so the rest of us should drink the tea.
30-Mar-82: 9:45 a.m. Folks are already bringing pails of garbage to the cleared areas, where boys were playing soccer. This would be the time to break habits, agree on a defined area further out and remind folks of it.
Laila has become steadily more self-pacing and ready to handle her stress—and ours, e.g., "Is this the kind of crying a hug would help?" She said yesterday morning it would be the last day she’d need us right nearby, and today she has not called us down and went out hill-sliding with Aziza and the others without protest!
31-Mar-82: S was talking with IA and L, watching, said, "Daddy, why in Morocco do people talk with their hands too?"
14-Apr-82, 8:45a. I am celebrating a rainy birthday morning in SKZ, the second post-permission (could there be another disappointment lurking here?) village-Apple day. Said's "Orientalism" is resting, cautionary, atop Drive #2. As I shaved downstairs just now with the aerosol cream S&L gave me (along with a decorated cheesecloth to protect food from flies, several of L's pictures, and "The White Hotel"), several passing goats poked their heads in to watch—buccolic village life. Mjid is supposed to turn up after breakfast if he doesn't have school (how would he know?) to help me get the two streets we now think of as including the PSU mapped out.
5p. Mjid did come by prior to lunch, school having been cancelled along with other government functions as part of an Islam-wide one day strike called by King Khaled of Arabia in sympathy with the two Muslims shot in the mosque in Al-Quds last weekend. 8:30p. Susan baked a chocolate cake and oatmeal chocolate chip brownies (having to send the former back to the ferran when it returned with a liquid middle—I think the baker couldn't believe anything so dark wasn't burned). What started as a little gathering of Mbarek's family finally involved roughly twenty people crowded into Laila's room for pictures and a taste of the goodies. I demonstrated "Space Invaders" and other games for Mjid, after he finished the street map, with his brother Mustafa and Si Mohamed kibbitzing—will I regret this? It certainly is nice to have the Apple back in residence.
June, 1982
Last update: 26 Apr 83 10 Mar 83 {reformatted} 22-Jun-82 21-Jun-82 19-Jun-82 18-Jun-82 17-Jun-82 16-Jun-82 15-Jun-82 11-Jun-82 10-Jun-82 07-Jun-82 03-Jun-82
[Note: at 21 Jun 82 this becomes "JUN82.2.R1.TEXT," which begins the account of Ramadan] MARKERS: mark1, mark2, relig1, relig2, kids1, kids2, war1, war2, gambling, shergi, nightmar, sex, histcal, dreamsym, hammam, relig3, ddream1
03-Jun-82 9:00 a. Back at the SKZ keyboard. Today is a cool cloudy day. Six days in Rabat yielded 3 hours with my client, Dr. Fikri of M. Health. Repeated last-minute cancellations and no-shows are the rule in this bureaucracy. S and L came in Friday evening, and we partied at the Flemings' Sebastian farewell that night (walking to Agdal [ca. one hour] after failing to catch a cab or bus in 45 minutes of trying), had late dinner with the Dukallis Sat (again calling Abdullah for a lift after 45 minutes trying to get transport), and supped with the Doves Sunday to meet Ted Curran, H'ford grad and the new DCM. We went to the beach with the Doves Saturday and the Morabets Sunday.
Yesterday H and I went twice to SK, first to buy cushions and a sdari and leave film for processing, then in the p.m. to pick up the cushions and sdari. We paid 5K rials for four meters of cushion and a 2m. sdari. We commissioned Qasm's taxi to take this back, at Dh. 30.
We had a long discussion of religion this morning, including adolescence as a time of perceived conflict between orthodox and popular religion. I suggested, after we'd discussed Noah and I'd showed H our English-Arabic Qur'an, that many Mor practices, e.g. regarding holy sites and spirit-possession, were hard to reconcile with orthodoxy. He talked about "durbuz", e.g. the female practice of asking for help while putting their heads under the brass balls afixed over the wood cover of SK's tomb. He said this involves typically seeking help against "mwallin lerd," and this is what the Qur'an condemns as putting another beside God. In criticism of this he offered the saying, "Don't make the saint a partner with God" ("mashurknash llah blsiyyid"). A fqi, who has his status because he has read the whole Qur'an three times and committed it to heart [H said he had got as far as S __?, starting with the shortest as is the practice], should be a corrector of people's belief and practice, but in fact for personal gain these regularly abet magic and belief in jnun by inscribing amulets. He also said [commenting that it was "haja xshina," i.e. something embarrassing/distressing to have to say] that fuqaha may sleep with married women who consult them, a direct sacrilege.
As a common example of the help fuqaha and old women (who H suggested probably learned from fuqaha) give women H mentioned "tukal", poisons: nail of finger, brain of mouse and tongue of donkey.
I suggested that adolescence may be the time when implicit contradictions between orthodox and popular practices become a source of worry and conflict, and H mentioned seeking one's mother's help to win a girl, or to produce or restore potency on or after the wedding night. [I mentioned the Freudian notion of the difficulty shifting from mother to bride as love object.] H said the groom's impotence was a result of "tuwahamma," a kind of hallucination (like seeing M-V in the moon when he was exiled).
On the subject of conflict between speech and practice H offered the example of a religious authority condemning strong drink on TV and stopping at a bar on leaving the studio. He also mentioned Saudi use of Morocco as a playground for lust. He'd heard a woman died after being bitten on the breast by a Saudi lover. [Malcolm said when I mentioned this theme in town that he'd heard many stories, particulary from a Moroccan U. Bordeaux 3eme cycle student studying prostituion in Casa. There seems lots of hostility due to expropriation of one's women, and Malcolm had heard that snatching little gold Qur'ans from the necks of women presumed given them by Saudis had become a Casa sport.]
We talked about the difficulty of accounting for individual differences [how hard it is to get across more than the trivial assertions, here as in the H'ford classroom]. He mentioned birth order, saying, "Mjid is following in my tracks" ("Mjid kayattr biya" {cf. Wehr pp. 3-4}) as an influence, since the younger sibling can visit and imitate the older.
5:45 p. IA just called me up to the roof to see the beginning of the harvest of the nearest wheat to us. Lots of people are watching. She also mentioned that it was going to bring a lot of dust, so I'll sign off.
07-Jun-82 10-53 a. We arrived on the morning train, passing the Douar Miloud school just in time to be spotted and intercepted by perhaps 40 kids between roughly 7 and 11 years of age, from Douar Doum (or "lkush"). They began calling to us in supposed French from across the road, then surrounded and studied us as we moved along. We began speaking to them in Arabic, to forestall the rapid escalation to harassment that I see as related to the notion that foreigners are beyond usual rules. After ten minutes and a couple hundred yards of progress, Q came by and, perhaps because he saw us as in a potential predicament, stopped. He got out and told the kids to beat it, at which they laughed and moved a few feet out of his way. As we got into the taxi, one of the older kids pinched my arm, a couple held the door to prevent my closing it, and (as it was closed), someone spat on the window!
I felt shaken by this after we reached home, and when H showed up a few minutes later (with my repaired Wallabees) both S and I started telling him of the episode. He was clearly ashamed on behalf of Morocco, but when S suggested that perhaps the children were simply uncontrolled enough to express a hostility to foreigners older people also feel, H objected that young Moroccan men walking girlfriends are also harrassed and have stones thrown at them. He left a few minutes later and Mj showed up shortly thereafter. I told him of our encounter and said that it was a problem in psychology for me to understand how controlled and well-behaved youth like him grew out of such uncontrolled kids. He too was embarrassed, like H mostly at the mention of spitting, and came up with the same example of kids harrassing couples, except that he suggested a youth walking a "Nasraniyya" might be harrassed [17-Jun-82: I've included this passage in letters to Sid and to Mitchell, though I wonder about the wisdom of doing so. I have used this episode with several friends to pose the question I put to Mj about how wild kids become controlled adults, but I don't feel I've thought the issue through well myself. Can substantial parts of superego development be deferred until middle adolescence? Are people right to argue that it's today's {huge numbers of surviving} kids who are uncontrollable—i.e. would fertility reduction make a big difference—or is it circumcision, or Moroccan Islam in particular?]
Recent Comments