Which is Which?!

A radically different world is suggesting itself forcefully, mercilessly, and persistently. I thought it had been what I just yearned for formerly. 

A change of the wokplace does not necessarily engender a change of mind-- my state of mind.

Seclusion is Integration!!!

“How come that seclusion is integration! That’s hodge-podge”, a reader might say. I will show you, dear confused readers who judge a piece of writing from its title, in what way seclusion is per se integration. This essay is an attempt towards questioning the true and real meaning of integration as a cardinal part of any modern society through casting the light on, not integration, but seclusion. This essay also aims at unveiling the pros of seclusion that work for the promotion and efficient materialisation of integration.

Let us first of all limit our imagination to the following people: writer, poet, prophet, athlete, boxer, student, and sufist. Each one of these people undubitibaly do contribute in one way or another to the integrativeness within their communities, either locally or globally.  Regardless of their interests, leanings, social status, or creed, those people do seclude themselves so as to make a change in their societies, achieving the so-called integration. The latter is achieved by means of the former; i.e, seclusion. I will elaborate more on that.

A Body for Sale

The clock rang 10:00 pm. The pub was empty. She majestically loomed out of the entrance, dressed in a jewelled-like red coat, headed straightforwardly towards the ladies room. Exactly after quarter an hour, she appeared out again in an almost-naked dress. Too different; too sexy!

Secluded in a corner, I was impatienty waiting for her appearance. She was the star of that samedi soir. Many men strived to have a seat close to her, yet not all of them could easily achieved this goal. It seemed that only foreigners-- non-Moroccan speakers-- could gain the neighbouring seat of the "lady". In my secluded corner was I still binocularing  her moves: the way she caressed her hair, the professional way of holding the cigarette, her grimaces, her sipping of wine, and her putting off of the fags.

Seeing or Believing?!

One gargantuan part of every human being’s life is the duality of SEEING/BELIEVING. Unlike other creatures (at least the ones we could see, not those we believe they could be), the human being’s life “fluctuates” between two extremes: SEEING and BELIEVING.

Do we have to see things so that we can later believe in them? And which should come first: SEEING or BELIEVING ? In fact, I posted this very same question on Facebook, and I received an interesting comment which did incite me to write this short essay in favour of my standpoint that you, my dear readership, would discover line in line out.

ثاني موقف سيجاري

من عادتي أن أتناول سيجارة بين الفينة والاخرى، خصوصا خلال فترة الاستراحة، التي غالبا ما تقدر بزهاء عشر دقائق. في يوم من الايام، وأثناء فترة استراحة الساعة العاشرة، تناولت سيجارة  بمعية كأس شاي بنكهة الزعتر؛ كنت جالسا وحدي كعادتي، أدخن   السيجارة وأمعن النظر في بعض الوجوه متأملا و مستحضرا بداعة و براعة الصنع و الصانع معا. في الجانب الاخر من الممر يجلس بعض زملاء العمل، يتناولون و يتبادلون القيل والقال بصوت أقرب من صوت الأحمرة في حالة الارتماء و  التمرغ على الأرض.

أول موقف سيجاري

حدث ذلك لما أردت شراء علبة سجائر، كان يوما ممطرا

.غابت فيه الشمس؛ ناولته المبلغ، فناولني العلبة

،ابتسم صاحب دكان التبغ بملء شدقيه

مناولا إياي

الأربعينية

مرت السنون و مازادتني إلا  الحزن و الشجون بعد فراق الأب الحنون، فلازلت أذكر جيدا الكيفية التي تلقيت بها خبر وفاة والدي. ورغم أنني لم أستطع حضور لحظة وضع جثمان والدي في مثواه الأخير، إلا أنني أتذكر بقوة ما حدث بعد مرور تسع و تلاثين يوما. إنها الليلة رقم أربعين؛ ليلة مميزة ولافتة للانتباه. ففي تلك الليلة ، حيث توافد الأفواج من الناس من كل حدب و صوب، بغية تقديم التعازي مجددا، 

وافتراس ما لذ و طاب من الأطباق المسيلة للعاب و المجحظة للعيون. 

                                                                                                           

في حقيقة الأمر، ما يهمني ها هنا ليس تذكر اللحظة ذاتها، وإنما التوغل ولو سطحيا في دلالاتها، خصوصا إذا تعلق الأمر بالرقم المصادف لليلة العزاء الثانية. إنه الرقم 40.   رقم عجيب و غريب: عجابته و غرابته تتجليان في   كونه—أي الرقم 40—يتكرر في مواضع خاصة، غاصة بالغموض، لكن مثيرة للاهتمام.                                    

فما هي إذن دلالات هذا الرقم و متى يتحقق؟

In commemoration of my father's death

That white drop -- dives deep

Into being brings me

Screaming, yelleing -- I stop

Till a drop

As white as the first

Passes down my oesophagus.

She 

As white as milk

As smooth as silk

Frees me -- away.

But again -- into another swaddle

As white as the first

I am wrapped.

And -- to this life

Come back -- never.

(with my father (bearded) and uncle (mom's brother).

My first English poem when I was a high school student

The Welfare of the Past

Glorious times, when birds warble

Love, happiness were glittering

All the moments had been enjoyable

Day by day, I feel suffering.

sorrow, depression and night

Are my only best friends

Nothing could be evident and bright

But friendship is the real funds.

I was captured and kept in chains

Each one caused by friends

My life has become a juice of pains

Where are brothers let alone friends.

One questions surrounded by gloom and fear

Where is freedom?

Many conventions and pledges, but none hears

everything at random.

Hypocrisy is  truth

Deception is faith

Life is being upside down

To be sly is faithful

To be straight is sinful.

I call out the welfare of the past

But nothing can come  back

We should live the fact

And confess

The past faded away and won't come back.

The Suspicious Numbers

Without making her aware of it, I erased --with a touch of my finger-- all the suspicious numbers from my mobile phone; then I put it in a place where she can easily see it. Acting as if I were not aware of it, my extremely jealous girlfriend secretly took my mobile and-- with quivering touches of her fingers-- she fumbled for the suspicious numbers. So refgretfully, she gave me the mobile, warmly hugging me and apologising for what she had done. So cunningly, I shoved her away then

The Ostrich Policy

"Since no one has seen me, I can do whatever I like and I'm on secure ground."

How many of us, how many times, happen to "soliloquize" and echo the very quoted sentence?

I bet every  breathing human being does utter it, on different situations and ages. As a child, when breaking a vase, one can just put his/her hands on the face and then s/he secure. Or maybe the child goes into hiding behind his/her mom's apron, then security is well-achieved. In a classroom, students  artfully search for hiding places  whenever asked to do a roleplay or, say, "show and tell" activity. More interesting is the fact that most students of different levels compete for the seating chairs most unseen  so that their eyes could not meet those of their teachers.

Politicians, too,

Why Seven?!

We were together, lying on a typically Moroccan settee. With her head pillowed on my right thigh, she was merrily watching an American animated film. Meanwhile, I was questionably enthralled by the sort of the spell that seven-year-old girl fell under. A spellbinding tale, indeed! I still remember very well every single shade of that fairy tale, and I can feel the spell under which my niece fell. She, as if by magic, was taken to another world, her body still and her eyes sparkling.

As for me, I too was spelled but differently. Out of the blue, a never-thought-about question  suggested itself; it was the title of the fairy tale, not the animation, which really pushed me to pen this article.

The Fiasco

I cannot remember when it was exactly...... but that was one night, inside a dark, still and gloomy operating theatre. A man laid down on a surgery table, surrendering to a very painful headache. In a trice, a surgeon entered the theatre, anaesthetized the patient and then shed the powerful searchlights upon him. Special rays broke into the filing cabinet of the patient's brain, detecting the following:

Enegmatic Dichotomies!!!

I was alone, all alone, doing nothing. In a twinkle of an eye, I felt it travelling throughout my body, penetrating my digestive system, having grasp of me. I suffered and I tranced. I remembered everything and I forgot all the things. It was part and parcel of me; it was overruling me. Uncontrollably, my eyes smilingly shed some hot tears. I very hard tried to stop them, but my eyes disobeyed me. I wanted to forget all of it, yet I found myself

The Winds of Change in Morocco

   “ I would bet every euro I possess to invest and settle in Marrakesh for once and all”, a foreign friend of mine once told me.

    Morocco has become a dreamland for foreingers as well as for Moroccans. A dream so dear and queer!!!

    Let us go back a little into history and try to rapidly survey the main reasons behind such a dream.

أوراق ســـــــرية

 ليست كباقي الفتيات هي, كانت تعشق الانفراد و العزلة منذ طفولتها. تحب والدتها

 .خٌــصَـلَ ضفائرها.... والعزلة

      

.لم يـٌعِرْ أُيُّ أحدٍ اهتماما لشخصيتها الغريبة الأطوار ولا أحدَ قَـدَّم لها الرعاية اللازمة

.صُـرِخ في وجهها مرات و مرات عدة

السبب كما جاء على لسان

                    

والدتها هو أنها "حدودية بزاف".الأب دائما مشغول وحتى و اٍن حـدث و جلس معها

 وهي في السابعة من عمرها كان كما لو أنه في جلسة رسمية مع

       

     "...... وفد عمل أجنبي. لطالما صرخ في وجه ابنته: "ششششش

لايريد أن يسمع طنين ذبابة؛ أب أناني , أليس كذلك؟ أخطأ كثيرا في حقها في التربية 

 ووسَّع دائرة خطئه عندما بلغت سنتها الثامنة عشر.

أَخْـــذ و أَخْــــــذ

.أولا: أَخَـذَ تْـها - باستمتاع -مع مشروب ما

.ثانيا: شَـعـَـرَتْ - من حيث لا تدري - بطاقة هائلة

.ثالتا: خَــلَــعَــتْ - بصعوبة بالغة - ملابسها لشدة الحر

.رابعا: انـتـابـها - وهي عارية الجسد - رغبة قوية في تمرير سكين على معصم يدها اليمنى

.خامسا و أخيرا: أخَــذَتْــها - تلك التي أَخَـذَتْـــها أولا - إلى ما بعد تاء الحياة

What is A Moroccan?

Oftentimes, such an easy-hard-to-answer question crosses the mind and no specific answer can be provided; for it deals with the mind, that abstract and complex entity which embodies layers and layers of variables. Worse than that is the adding of the culture “Moroccan” which is, in its turn, that whole range of traditions, religion, language, food, clothing... etc. So, how can we define such a complex concept?

More than two centuries ago, specifically in 1782, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur, a French-born American fiction writer and novelist, published Letters from an American Farmer. It was in the third letter of this book that Crèvecoeur asked his unforgettable question: “what is an American?”.  Crèvecoeur did in fact answer this question in an attempt to gratify the curiosity of a friend; he provided his English friend with a wide range of information about this new world and its setllers.

Not to follow the lead of Crèvecoeur to the letter, and to try to gratify the curiosity of the readership, we shall briefly sweep over some idiosyncratic facts about the Moroccan mind.

Looking swiftly at Morocco as a geographical spot, any casual observer can obviously notice that it is strategically located: the European Union northernly, US Westernly, Middle East easternly, and Africa southernly-- and of course, Morocco being as the extreme northern part of Africa. Having another look at the Morrocan map, one is to see that the more or less rectangular shape of Morocco is really diverse and varied:  northern Morocco, “middle” Morocco, and southern Morocco—Moroccan sahara. This is what superficially appears on the map. But what about the deep structure, or maybe better put, the mind of Moroccans? Does the Moroccan mind display and reflect such richness and diversity as shown on both surface structures—the world as well as the national map?

Certainly, the “mind” as a philosophical term stands for not only what is formally intellectual but all the cultural accumulations: traditions, behaviours, customs, religion, language, food, clothing... etc. And that is culture. We do have Rifis, Berbers, Fassis, Marrakshis, Hassanis, to name but a few. In Morocco, as you move from one city to another, your mind tends to shift. Everyone tries to impose their “culture” on the other either consciously or unconsciously. Some Moroccan sects consider their “culture” as the right one and fight for that. Others deem it so but cannot stand the fight of prioritisation. So, who is wrong and who is right? No one could tell!  

So again, what is a Moroccan?

Undubitably, all Moroccans are aware of what has been mentioned above; but doubtedly enough, not all of them are conscious of what it takes and means to be as such inside the mind. For what appears on maps is valueless and useless unless it is reflected in people’s attitudes and behaviours. How many of us consider this plurality of Morocco and tries his/her best to live within its framework?

We are Moroccans, not just Berbers, Fassis, Rifis, Marrakshis or whatever. We are plural, not singular. We are culturally pluralistic, not blindly singular. Such pluralism is what makes us far from vicious conflicts and never-to-end clashes. If we continue perceiving the Moroccan identity and particularity in their narrow meaning, we will never come to understand  that a wider meaning is there. Both meanings complete one another; each is incumbent upon the other. They are like a coin with two sides. And a coin is not a coin if it is not two-sided! Thus, we are Berber-Moroccans and Moroccan Berbers; Fassi Moroocans and Moroccan Fassis; Hassani Moroccans and Moroccan Hassanis; Rifi Moroccans and Moroccan Riffis; and so forth.

All in all, we are first and foremost Moroccans—which melts all of our differences and makes us one entity and unity. For that is the Moroccan mind—the Moroccan identity.

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief!

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief!

People of this world-- this life; do dare and do not care, for there is but one life. 

Ask questions, doubt exsitence, and do not live in the Absence;

Surely asking and doubting make the roots of knowldge.

Try the untried, take the untaken, the road not taken;

And remember: belief and wonder; the latter is much better.