They Welcomed Him

A few days ago while in the middle of a conversation, the person i was speaking to used a Moroccan saying that i had never heard before, but which instantly amused me and decidedly entered my repertoire, the saying goes (( What can the dead person do in the face of the person who has come to wash him for burial?)) Another version begins ((What can the dead person say......))

The saying perfectly expresses a sense of complete helplessness and surrender, and is a good reminder about the incapacity of death. I heard it during an unintended visit to the countryside about an hour and a half outside of Fes.
Someone I know recommended that i speak to a relative of his about my research and I misunderstood where the person lived. He mentioned a small town called Sefrou not too far from Fes, about 20 kilometers or so, what i didn't get when he first told me about the place was that once I got to that town I would have to take a small minibus out into the rocky country hills. I had planned on just going for the day and being back in Fes by nightfall. But I ended up spending three days there in a part of the countryside called L'anusur.

As I was sitting on the minibus in Sefrou waiting for it to fill up, I tried to process how quickly my environment had changed. Just an hour earlier I had been in Fes , and now I was in the primarily Berber-speaking countryside, the people talking on the minibus were using Berber ( also known as Shilha or Amazighi , take your pick). Once we actually took off with 13 or so of us piled into the minibus , an interesting conversation began between three men about the person of Moulay Idriss I, the descendant of the Prophet( peace be upon him) who is credited with making the plans for the building of Fes and first came and introduced Islam to the natives of Morocco about 1,200 years ago.

Two of the men were openly antagonistic about Moulay Idriss and said questioning, "What do we know about him, for all we know he could have been a thief?" The third man who was wearing a yellow jilebba said "No, he opened Morocco, [opened here can have the meaning of conquer]" The other two men, immediately went to refute this saying "No he did not open [ i.e. conquer Morocco], he came here fleeing Harun ar-Rashid " The man in the yellow jilleba rephrased his earlier statement and said "He opened Morocco to Islam" One of the two men said something along the lines of "If the same kind of Berbers who are here today had been around then, they would have slaughtered the Berber woman who carried his (Moulay Idriss's) child. I must admit that i was struck by the violent image of this statement and wondering how my friend in the yellow jilebba would respond. He was very patient and was not jarred by what the man said, he replied , "But no, they didn't do that, they welcomed him ( Moulay Idriss) and honored him and learned from him about Islam."

The conversation slowly tapered off after that, and i began to think about the whole modern ethnic nationalist phenomenon of the Berber/ Arab divide in North Africa and how in the past many of the great Islamic scholars were Berbers, even someone like Ibn Ajur a Berber man, who coincidentally was from Sefrou, the town from where I took the minibus, went on to become one of the masters of Arabic grammar and write the classic book al-Ajurumiyya which is still used today in traditional Islamic education curriculums.

Anyway, after picking up and dropping off passengers at a weekly market we passed, we drive a bit more and the man sitting in the seat in front of me tells me that we have just driven past the place I had told the driver i wanted to get off. I immediately clap my hands which is a signal that i want the driver to stop, pay my 6 dirhams to the bus assistant, then walk the country road hoping i can figure out how to find the people I am looking for. A woman comes toward me and says my name and walks me up the rocky path to her house. One of the first things I say to her after the pleasant formalities is "you have to tell me how you came to live out here." I am so curious because I know that she and her husband are originally from Fes.

She tells me while preparing breakfast for us ( it is not quite 10 am) that her and her husband decided to move out to the countryside about 6 years ago after deciding that they should try to make a life for themselves. She said that if you are realistic about the situation in Morocco , you know that not everybody is going to find a job.[unemployment in Morocco is officially reported to be ridiculously low, but unofficially seems to be about 40% ] Her and her husband are both college educated . Now they live with their young son in a house they built recently and grow fruits to sell at market and vegetables for their own consumption and run a little country store.

I was so relieved to meet people like this, who have ambition, but also contentment, and were deeply spiritual. In the afternoon I went out to the vegetable garden with her and she cut fresh zucchini and another cucumber-like vegetable we don't have in the US and showed me the peach trees and almond trees on their land. I started to think about how distanced my life in America is from "the land" and where my food is grown. To be this old and only for the first time see a peach growing on a tree, wow.

I spent the next few days with them and then pulled myself away early on a Friday morning by flagging down a bus headed for Fes that passed by on the road near their house. Of course in typical Moroccan fashion, she claimed that my visit was too short and made me promise to come back again soon. An hour and half after hopping onto the bus on the side of the road I was back in the urbanity of Fes, delightfully surprised by my accidental trip to the countryside.