Ammi M’bark returned from Mecca
Some time ago, my husband’s uncle returned from Mecca. We went to pick him up at the airport, in a convoy, to take him home to Beni Mellal to celebrate his return.
Until now, I had only experienced these pilgrimage return celebrations in the countryside, with people who were quite old, like my husband’s father, who was over eighty at the time of his Hajj, or some of his uncles, in the same generation.
This is totally different. This uncle, who is called M’Bark, is much younger, he is less than fifty years old, and he is a businessman. So he went to Mecca on his own, without benefiting from the support that the Moroccan state grants to people who are not rich.
Some people say that he left at such a young age to make up not for his fortune, but for the way he made it. For getting rich is legitimate in Islam, as long as you do it honestly. And in Morocco, honest fortunes are rare.
Those who make the pilgrimage are forgiven, but only if they have the firm intention not to do it again (like Catholics who go to confession), and they must put this intention into practice. Perhaps Ammi [my uncle] M’Bark will have to go back in a few years? He is making the pilgrimage with his wife, Latifa, who has nothing serious to apologise for.
And despite my slight irony, I like them both very much. Ammi M’Bark is intelligent, cultured, generous, kind, and he ‘makes do’ with a country that does not give people of integrity the means to succeed.
Nevertheless, this return party was the occasion for many surprises. As a foreigner who was not raised in a culture, who has not become accustomed to seeing as ‘normal’ acts that everyone else does, I still asked myself many questions, without getting satisfactory answers.
First of all, about the need to have a party on the way back
To each his own, I am rather introverted. I imagine that, if I were to convert, the pilgrimage experience would be something extraordinary, something I would want to keep the atmosphere of for as long as possible, to remain, in thoughts and prayers, in my little bubble. Even more so after a long flight home.
But Latifa had no choice. She was already very tired and had to receive her neighbours and family on the same day. Everything had been prepared by those who had stayed behind, but she was the hostess, the one who had to welcome the women, answer the congratulatory phone calls, take care of the instructions to the caterer.
I found this an extremely abrupt return to secular life. The intrusion of the ‘not so close’ into intimate moments is experienced as normal here. When she gives birth, the young mother doesn’t have a minute’s peace to get to know her child on the first day, everyone finds it normal to phone her and come and see her, even if the birth was long and difficult. It is a duty that no one can shirk.
I have the same reticence about profession of faith celebrations, Bar Mitzvahs and other purely religious events that turn into big celebrations. It seems to me that in our Catholicism, the only thing left to celebrate in a way that is appropriate to a religious event is ordination.
But when I tried to express this to my husband, I felt that I was addressing a kind of wall: it’s normal, that’s the way it is, everyone is happy, and besides, we have to distribute the water from Zem-Zem, and people wouldn’t understand if there was no celebration.
But what party? In the women’s room, where I was sitting, patient and resigned, there was no real party… to be honest, I have the impression that people were waiting, like me, for the time to pass and for it to be over. I was sitting on my sofa next to Ba-Hijja, a cousin of ours whom I love very much. She is a civil servant, but she works a lot, she is always on the move, whether in her office at the commune or at home. Unfortunately, her French is too weak for us to communicate. However, there, no words were needed to know that she was as bored as I was.
Music is haram
I also understood at that famous return party from Mecca why music was haram. In his infinite wisdom, the Prophet already knew that, a millennium later, his followers would be using and abusing microphones, speakers and hi-fi equipment whose only quality would be in the number of decibels emitted.
Joking aside, to understand my astonishment, you need to know that music is indeed haram (forbidden) in Islam. Only drums and singing are allowed. Dancing is also haram (and even dancing between women, you can’t imagine for a moment that a woman would be allowed to dance in front of a man who is not her close family).
Problem: there is no celebration without music in Morocco, but how can “real” music be played at a festival celebrating a return from pilgrimage?
Solution: we limit ourselves to songs and drums.
So, in the caidal tent where, at around 3pm, the women were patiently waiting for their lunch, I saw an orchestra arrive, made up of four women wearing the same striped djellaba and some large drums.
I had watched from the corner of my eye as the speakers were set up, wondering what absurd idea the caterer had to set them up behind the tables, just behind the tables, roughly between 10 and 60 centimetres from the ears of the guests, blessing my luck as the one closest to us was set up two tables away. I have sensitive ears, which is not easy in Morocco, and I was going to be reasonably spared.
I wasn’t. While the women were mic’ing the sound of “Allah, Allah” (which replaced (very irreverently for my taste) the traditional “1, 2, 3”), the young man in charge of it all, whose ears must already be below 50 decibels, decided to move the speaker right behind us.
My God…. The small supply of Kleenex on the table quickly turned into improvised earplugs, on my initiative.
And the recital began. As far as my weak Arabic allows me to judge, it was suras, religious songs, listened to with respect by the participants among whom there were all kinds of veils, from the full niqab to the joyful multicoloured scarf matched with the caftan, because, as usual, these ladies were making themselves beautiful. The only women with hair were me and the waitresses. I told myself that we were perfectly respecting the word that enjoined women to veil themselves to distinguish themselves from infidels and slaves…
The recital was interrupted for a few minutes, the time for the prayer. At festivals, this is generally not done much, or discreetly, but here, given the reason and the attendance, about half of the women began to pray, in the caidal tent itself (and, says my critical mind, without having done their ablutions beforehand…)
After the prayer, the singers were in good form, and then began an episode that marked me, while my husband thinks that I really have a twisted mind.
Do you know the Middle Atlas dances? It’s sort of the local, dressed-up version of the oriental dance. The woman is covered from head to toe, but in many areas the scarf is removed for the duration of the dance, and otherwise it is embellished with beads and sequins, like the belt. When dancing, the woman ties the belt “around the hips” (a modest expression) “under the buttocks” (an exact description) and emphasizes the movements of the hips and the bust. Because, even if it is difficult to see on the video I showed you, the wiggles and the jerks of the shoulders, which make the breasts move in rhythm, are perfectly explicit. The wiggling is in fact identical to the pubic stunts that got rock singers banned from television in the 1960s.
And now, in this religious festival of return from pilgrimage, you can imagine my four female singers starting a catchy tune, to the lyrics of “Ghassoul Allah” i.e. “The Messenger of God”. If you have seen “La vie est long fleuve tranquille”, Patrick Bouchitey singing “Jésus Revient” gives you a good idea of the rhythm and the musical quality.
The women are very happy, obviously the previous meditation did not suit them too well. They start clapping their hands in rhythm, and suddenly one of them jumps up in the middle of the tables and dances.
I couldn’t film the rhythmic clapping to the words of praise of the Messenger of God, and if I could have, I certainly wouldn’t have betrayed the privacy of these women. You can see the equivalent in this video:
But I confess, I don’t understand.
Or rather, I understand that the cultural difference, as they say, makes me see things with a different eye.
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