Another Holiday

            This past Thursday was another Muslim religious holiday, Eid Mawlid An Nabbaou, the day celebrating the Prophet’s birthday.  As with most Muslim holidays, people celebrate by getting together with family and friends and sharing special foods, specifically (at least in my region) bgheir (a delicious light pancake, usually topped in honey and often served with olive oil and jam), hlwa (cookies), a cake that amounts to a super delicious bunt cake, and, of course, tea.  As usual a split my time between the various families that invited me to participate—meaning I ate sugar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as everyone saved the special, traditional treats for when they’d invited the American over.  My day started with breakfast at my mudir’s.  I had carefully selected an outfit meant to respect the holiday (translation: I wore a green shirt (the color of the prophet) under my traditional Moroccan wear).  His teenage son didn’t want to get up and join breakfast, complaining it was before eleven on a holiday.  Afterwards I went to my host family’s house where, upon seeing my new asanar (traditional Tamazight cloak) my host uncle decided he needed a new one too, and decided he would change from the white ones he’s always had to a black one like mine.  He also wants a new, black djellaba.  In other words, I’ve inspired my host uncle to dress like a Sith Lord.  Success?

            After leaving their place I ran into a group of local boys with whom I often have far ranging (though by no means deep) conversations.  One of them is fascinated by Marx and other 19^th century thinkers and asked my opinion of him, but before we could develop that topic another asked what I think about Beethoven—I guess it was a Germanic kind of day—and before we got too deep into him we were on to opera and Verdi.  The Marxist prefers French opera, where I’m out of my depth, knowing nothing about it.  From there we made the logical jump to beat boxing, hip-hop, and break dancing.  One kid claimed to be a master break dancer, though he wasn’t enough of one to actually show us his skills.  Another kid did do what sounded to me like a pretty good cover of a French rap, and the Marxist tried to freestyle in English.  There wasn’t really sense to it, and the pronunciation was a little scary, but the rhythm rocked.  All the while they would whistle and point whenever a pretty girl walked by, but after I tried a couple of times to explain why they shouldn’t do that they stopped pestering the girls and instead just asked me what I thought of each one.  I guess, or at least hope, it was less annoying for the girls at least!

            Later, after the young girls forgot to show up to the Frisbee session they’d scheduled earlier in the week (or perhaps I forgot we weren’t doing it on the holiday), I ran into a couple of the same boys and one of them asked me for the low down on Satanism and why they use the same five pointed star symbol as is on the Moroccan flag.  Not too long after that though we were on to local history, he asked if I’d ever seen Zouia (the ruins from a few posts ago), and went on to explain how at one time this region was all small, warring kingdoms until the first Alowie (the current king’s family) subdued them, though for a brief time before then the Saadian Sultan in Marrakech had subjugated them, and during other periods rulers from Fes had great influence here.  He’s actually a medieval history student at the university in Meknes now, so he and I often talk about history, especially local, Spanish, and Crusading, since that’s where we share most knowledge.  I’m sure we’d have launched on another tangent soon enough, but I glanced at my watch and realized I was late for meeting a student for another holiday celebration.

            At that student’s house I tried my hand at reading an Arabic wall decoration, a Quranic quote, which soon led to us discussing the Quran.  One thing we discussed which I don’t think of talked about on this blog before is the widespread belief that the Quran says many things poetically that science later confirmed.  The example my student used was how a baby grows in the womb, which I guess works, though unless my English translation says something very different from the Arabic you have to give the poetry a whole lot license for it to be exact science.  Since I’ve been reading more about Islamic philosophy, theology, and mysticism recently this became a jumping off point to a discussion of literalism and symbolic reading of the Quran, specifically the interpretations of Ibn Sina, called Avicenna in the West.  Ibn Sina fascinates me because he read and modified the ideas of the same philosophers, specifically the Neo-Platonist Plotinus, as many of the early Christian philosophers and theologians, including Augustine, and came to a shockingly similar conception of God (immaterial, out of the bounds of the physical universe, similar to a Platonic Ideal (the Ideal of Ideals), most understandable (though still ineffable) through contemplation and study), though obviously without the complications of Christology (though he actually did have an intermediary ideal taking the place of Christ as a stepping stone between man’s intellect and God’s).  My student of course knew all about Ibn Sina, and also knew that some other thinkers castigated him for importing foreign ideas into Islam, but had never heard about Neo-Platonism, or, in fact, of Plato.  This is the second time I’ve met a highly educated Moroccan who has never heard of Plato, which makes me wonder what they’re teaching them in these schools.  It must be a strange education, to know that Ibn Sina and Ibn Rashd (Averroes), two of the most highly respected Muslim philosophers—knowing about them here is kind of like knowing about Descartes or Voltaire in the West, impossible not to even if you haven’t necessarily read them—wrote things which other thinkers thought were foreign imports that nevertheless made a deep impression on Islam but not to know which things were foreign imports and who had originally thought them. 

Moving on from Plato, but staying in the realm of Quranic interpretation, my student talked about how most Muslims (like most Christians) are not well informed about Quranic interpretations, and the true meaning of many passages is obscure.  People also often mix folk traditions in with Islamic traditions, but call them both Islamic, so it’s hard to know what in the countryside is Islam and what isn’t.  Of course, since this holiday celebrating the prophet’s birth wasn’t retrofitted to happen on the same day as an old Roman party it seemed to me like these weren’t overwhelming modifications to incorporate local beliefs.

A long and fascinating day, as I’m sure you can tell.  While I ended it by reading more Islamic philosophy before bedtime I’ll let you guys end it with some of Joha’s wisdom:

Joha and his son were going to the market one day.  The boy was riding on the donkey and Joha was walking beside them.  A man passed by and said, “Look at that!  Young people today have no respect for their elders.  That strong, young boy is riding and the older man is walking.”

So Joha told his son, “You’d better let me ride,” so they changed places.

Soon another man came by and said, “Look at that, that poor little boy has to walk in the hot sun while his lazy father rides.”

So Joha told his son, “I guess we should both walk.”

Then two more men came by and saw they both walking.  One turned to the other and said, “Look at those two fools.  They have a fine donkey and neither of them is riding it on this hot day.”

Joha turned to his son and said, “You see, it does no good to listen to what others say.”