Drop by Drop the River Floods

            This has been a full week of Moroccan holidays.  Early on in the week was the anniversary of the Green March, which commemorates Morocco’s occupation of the formerly Spanish controlled mandates which in America we call the Western Sahara.  Normally I don’t shy away from touchy topics, but our relative positions on the legitimacy of this are one of the few disagreements I let lie with Moroccans, though as with many things I have heard a few people in the younger generation question the legitimacy of this past action.  The other holiday was the Muslim New Year.  Happy 1435.

            On the night of the New Year—like Jewish holidays, Muslim ones generally start at sundown, so calling it New Year’s Eve would be a misnomer—I was invited to a party at a local acquaintance’s house.  I met this guy once when we both had to take early morning buses and sat together at the station waiting for our late transportation in opposite directions.  He is the president of the local veterans’ association, and many of the people at the party were former military men, along with a couple of young men my age.  There was also a women’s party, though as usual that happened in another room so I have no idea what the make-up of it was.

            In the men’s room, topics ranged from the Arab Spring to the new highway that apparently was recently announced to connect Beni Mellal and Fes.  This highway would completely change life in this part of the country, though the men disagreed as to how.  Some believe that towns like ours, which essentially lies on the Route 66 that this highway would replace, will lose much of their raison d’etre as entry points for farmers to the main road and suffer.  They believe the new highway will destroy the countryside lifestyle.  Others believe the highway, which would have three exits all within 30 kilometers of the town, will provide new economic opportunities for the region.

            Regarding the Arab Spring, they talked at length about the political situations in Libya and Syria, which led to rebellion, and the situation here, which led to reform.  For me, it was interesting to listen to older, former soldiers perspectives on this issue, because usually I only hear from youth, whose take on the reforms the king made in the wake of the Arab Spring in Morocco—called the February 20^th Movement, for its start date—is quite different from the older take.  While many young people say they don’t think the reforms went far enough, the older men think the new Constitution is very good, though they still acknowledge the reforms were necessary for the entrenched powers to stay entrenched.

            From talking about the political situation the conversation soon shifted to talk about Morocco in general, and they wanted to know my opinion as a foreigner.  I gave my usual answer about things I like in the country, but since they obviously wanted a fuller answer I also talked about the gender disparity which frequent readers know I believe to be one of Morocco’s biggest challenges.  As I was talking about developing cultural attitudes towards women’s equality one of the party’s few young men asked me why it is always non-Western countries that have to change their culture.  In short I was accused of being a cultural imperialist.

I’ve thought a lot about culture, both American and Moroccan, the last 19 months I’ve lived here.  When I first arrived I was something of a cultural relativist, and though I didn’t buy completely into the idea that cultures can only be judged by their own rubrics I certainly tended that way.  Over time I shed this view entirely and started to think in more absolutist terms that, while I didn’t like thinking those thoughts, I couldn’t shake.  Although America was far from perfect in this new view on culture of mine it is only in Morocco that I’ve ever seriously felt proud to be an American.  Even before this October shook that pride, my thoughts had already shifted again.  Central to my erstwhile American jingoism was the belief that what made American culture great was its diversity and fluidity.  Around a shared set of central tenets, there are uncountable different ways of being an American.  What I came to realize, and what I realize now was always my problem with cultural relativism, is that this is true of all cultures.  Cultural relativistic ideas, at least as I’d been exposed to them, always seem to function on the assumption that cultures aren’t themselves changing and transforming over time.  Cultural Relativists are right in that Cultural Imperialists have no right to dictate how another culture acts or develops, but treating culture statically doesn’t allow for the natural growth that will happen in all cultures.  Just as a society of individuals inspires humane tendencies in individuals so the world’s society of cultures ought to inspire the growth of human liberty, equality, and dignity in all cultures, each in their own manner.  Which I guess is probably a pretty common belief, and certainly what I believed coming in, but I had no idea how to articulate it even in my own language.

Now, my Arabic has gotten pretty good, but it is in no way good enough to explain that monster of a paragraph in a way that wouldn’t raise a whole bunch of confused eyebrows around the tagine, so instead I replied with a more metaphorical version.  I said first that American culture does change; we talk about our cultures of the 60s, 70s, and 80s as different both from each other and from now.  Culture, I said, is not a stone, but a river, and drop by drop the river floods.  The last phrase is a bit of Moroccan folk wisdom, and I don’t know whether it was the metaphor, the appropriation, or the idea itself, but the older men nodded in agreement after.  We then talked for a little bit about how attitudes towards women and women’s freedoms have changed in their lifetimes, and how they think the trend will continue with time.

Since I haven’t told a Joha joke in awhile here are two:

One day Joha was sitting by a lake watching several ducks swimming nearby.  He decided that he could catch one of the ducks and have a fine dinner.  He quietly went into the water and swam up behind the ducks, but just as he approached the ducks flew away.

Back on shore, and now feeling very hungry, Joha took out a piece of bread and dipped it in the water.  A fisherman saw him do this and asked what he was doing.  “I’m eating duck soup,” replied Joha.

There was a new barber in town, but he was not very experienced.  Joha decided to give him some business, so he to went to have his head shaved.  The barber’s razor was not sharp, and he was very careless.  Several times he cut Joha, who was losing patience.

Suddenly there was a loud scream from the shop next door.  “What was that?” cried Joha.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the barber, “There’s a blacksmith next door and he was just nailing new shoes on a horse.”

“Oh, I see,” said Joha, “I thought they were giving it a shave.”