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Of Women-Centered Moroccan Tales and Their Imagined Communities

2005; Wiley; Volume: 95; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1478-1913.2005.00087.x

1478-1913

Hasna Lebbady,

Hispanic-African Historical Relations

The early modern period saw a succession of migrations to Morocco from Spain consisting of thousands of Andalusian immigrants. Those immigrants, who settled in such towns in the north of Morocco as Fez, Sale, Chefchaouen and Tetouan, brought with them a culture characterized by the Moorish architecture which distinguishes many of the buildings in those medinas, the Andalusian music that survives to this day, and the tales they told, which, along with their songs, were often the only luggage they could bring with them.1 Although no specific author — or date — can be ascribed to the tales, those told by women contain a wealth of information about the women who told them and constitute “systems of signification by which we make sense of the past.”2 They present fascinating insights into the concerns of those Muslim women who have left us so few written documents about themselves. This paper will introduce one of those tales that I compiled from the accounts by numerous women in Tetouan, which is still in many ways an Andalusian city. Some features in the tale suggest socio-political set-ups similar to those that existed both in al-Andalus and in Tetouan. For the women who told them originally, storytelling was not only a source of entertainment, but also a means of articulating their concerns about both the trauma of exile and their position as women trying to come to terms with their new circumstances. The idea of exile became inextricably woven into the tale, which forms part of the oral tradition, but can be seen as “a communal experience; [where] writing participates in the constitution of a community.”3 Thus, rather than the “[r]ivalry between wives and concubines [which] meant that poison was ‘the active agent’ in many stories of harem life,”4 what becomes evident here is the collaboration between the women involved in the storytelling, who were trying to come to terms with their new circumstances in light of their past heritage. It was between the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries that successive waves of Andalusian immigrants came to Morocco from Spain. These were later arrivals than the Andalusian émigrés whom Abdellah Laroui describes as having introduced “court etiquette, formalism and diplomacy”5 to the various Maghrebi courts of the fourteenth century. The later Andalusian immigrants were forced into exile and those who settled in Tetouan began arriving there between 1483 and 1485.6 They came initially from Granada, the only Nasride kingdom that had preserved its autonomy after al-Andalus was conquered by the kingdom of Castile in the early thirteenth century. During the next two centuries, Granada developed its own culture and art form, known in art history as Mudejar— the name designating the Muslims who remained in Spain after the Catholic conquest. Numerous features of that Nasride and Mudejar culture can be found in Tetouan where, significantly, much has been preserved by women. As Miége, Benaboud and Erzini point out, the style of dress of the Mudejar women of Granada is still evident in the large hats, short coats and gaiters of the jbala women in the countryside around Tetouan as are certain features of Nasride jewelry, which still form part of Tetouani jewelry.7 Similarly, designs of Nasride and Mudejar embroidery can still be found in some traditional Tetouani embroidery, the only one in North Africa where those designs have been preserved.8 The importance granted women in such Moroccan societies as that of Tetouan is partly due to the legacy inherited from al-Andalus, where women had been protected by a very considerate legislation,9 permitting a large number of them to work not only as midwives and wet nurses but also as calligraphers and teachers,10 and enabling others to become authors and poets.11 The original Mudejar immigrants in Tetouan were eventually joined by the Moriscos— those Muslims who had been baptized after Granada was conquered by the Catholic kings in 1492, but secretly preserved their Muslim faith. They were eventually expelled from Spain, not only from Granada but also from Castille and Aragon,12 in two major waves: first in 1566–67 and again in 1609–10.13 Together, these different waves of immigrants constituted the Andalusian component of Tetouani society, which also became its bourgeoisie. Like the women in al-Andalus, these women also became calligraphers, teachers, midwives and doctors, some of whom became famous for the jbeera they made to heal broken bones.14 Some of them also had a substantial amount of wealth at their disposal enabling them to wield considerable political power as well as to leave endowments for various charitable and religious purposes.15 Moreover, the importance granted women was not limited to those women who have been recognized by historians, such as as-sit al-h̄urra, who ruled Tetouan from 1525–1542,16 but also to less well-known women, including the slave girls. As in al-Andalus, to be slave girls or jawari17 was not necessarily to be looked down upon.18 In some respects, it is difficult to tell whether it was better to be a free woman or a slave.19 What becomes evident is that both led more rewarding and versatile lives than the image of the harem-bound Muslim woman would suggest. Both the upper class women who became poets and the jawari who took part in poetic gatherings contributing their own improvised verses, formed part of a long and rich literary tradition produced by Muslim women. This is the tradition that appears to have evolved into the tales still told in the households of Moroccan medinas by women, as is the case of “The Female Camel.” The protagonist in this tale is a princess, the only child of a Sultan, who kept her hidden behind seven h̄ijābs or curtains in her lavishly furnished room. Although he saw to it that she had everything she needed, one day the princess fell ill and started to pine away, losing her vitality day by day. Very upset, the Sultan tried all within his means to find a cure for her. He summoned all the best doctors in the realm, one by one, but not one of them could cure her. Now in that same medina, there lived an old woman who had heard about the princess's illness. Deciding to try her luck with the Sultan, she set out one fine day for his palace, at the gate of which she was asked about her business and treated with much amusement by the guards once she had explained her mission. However, when they perceived how resolved she was, they consulted with each other and eventually sent to inform the Sultan, who was at first annoyed, but then realized that since his other efforts to cure the princess had failed, it wouldn't hurt to try the old woman. So the old woman was led to the princess's quarters. At the entrance, the servants left her and, asking permission to enter, she was told, with all the respect due to her age: “Lift the h̄ijāb and enter, dear aunt spinster.” The Sultan's daughter kept repeating this phrase until the woman had lifted all seven h̄ijābs. Finally she found herself face to face with the princess, whose pale face provided a marked contrast with her sumptuous surroundings. The woman started asking her about what might be ailing her. Shortly, she found out that the girl had never been outside the palace. When the old woman asked her if she would like to go out, the girl's face became alive with excitement, but she pointed out that her father would never permit such a thing. The old woman mused over this and finally she assured the girl that she had devised a plan to deal with the Sultan. The Sultan was very surprised to see the old woman return after only a short consultation with his daughter and even more surprised to hear that she knew both what ailed his daughter and how it could be cured. He immediately wanted to know what she proposed. So she told him that it was very simple, what his daughter needed was to visit a saint's shrine, that she herself knew the exact one where she could find the cure she needed and was ready to accompany her there. It seemed such a simple and appropriate solution that the Sultan wondered why he hadn't thought of it himself. So they agreed upon a proper time when the old woman could take the girl to the shrine. On the appointed day, the old woman came to take out the princess, who was in a state of great excitement as they set out, hardly able to believe that she was finally outside. So the woman took her for a long walk in the country. When they became tired, they sat down to rest next to a flowing river. They had not been sitting there gazing into the river for very long when they noticed a rock lifting itself up and a female camel emerging from under it. The camel was laden with dirty dishes, which it brought into the river and addressed: “Get down my little dishes; get cleaned with all the fishes.” At which point the dishes proceeded to get down from its back and to clean themselves thoroughly in the river. Once they were spotlessly clean, she again told them: “Get back my little dishes; you've fulfilled all my wishes.” At this the dishes all piled themselves neatly on its back again and the camel exited through the same opening from which it had emerged. The princess, thrilled by this whole spectacle, could contain her curiosity no longer, but wished immediately to follow the camel. So they both followed it through the narrow passage — way under the rock. As soon as they did so they found themselves in an enchanting garden. What fountains there were and what exquisite flowers of every color. The further they proceeded into the garden the more dazzled they were with its beauty. Finally they sat down to contemplate the magnificent scene in front of them. At this point, they saw two pigeons come flying from some distance. One dived into a fountain of milk and emerged as a handsome white prince. The other dived into a fountain of tar and emerged as his black servant. The two young men came forward and started talking to them. Having discerned the relationship between them, the prince soon asked the servant to take the old woman away and kill her. Then he and the princess sat in the garden where they talked and talked to their hearts’ content. When night fell the prince spread for her a bed of roses and covered her with narcissus once she had fallen asleep. When the princess woke up in the morning, she found herself in a wilderness where there was not a soul. The only thing that remained from the previous night was the bed of roses and narcissus that the prince had spread for her, so she got up and started walking. She had on her nothing apart from her fine clothes and jewelry, which, it finally occurred to her, she should hide. So after walking for some time, she came upon a shepherd herding his sheep and goats. She asked him to give her the skin of one of his goats in exchange for one of her bracelets. The shepherd, who was only too pleased to oblige her, immediately proceeded to slaughter one of his goats and skin it. She then covered herself with the goatskin and proceeded on her difficult journey in the wilderness. As she walked she kept repeating: I have neither the shelter of my father's house, Nor nourishment for my love and a future spouse, I would rather that my beloved had left me with kisses Than spread my bed with roses and cover me with narcissus. After walking for many days, she finally began to see the lights of and to hear the sounds of a distant medina. As she approached it she could see that the people were preparing for some big event. She stood at the town gate for some time before she summoned up the courage to ask what was happening. They informed her that they were preparing for the wedding of their prince. So she offered to help them in exchange for room and board. Mistaking her for a poor goat-skinned girl, they let her come into the medina and help with the preparations. She spent some time thus serving them, when one day she had the opportunity to see the prince who was getting married. She was amazed to find out that he was the same prince she had met in the enchanted garden. At this point the princess began to lose all hope, as it had been the possibility of finding him that had kept her going. Now she had found him but he was getting married. After the wedding, her position in that medina became more precarious than ever before. Finding herself in such a plight, she one day went into the garden of the palace and started going from one flower bush to the next. The first one she visited was the rose bush with whom she pleaded: “I'm weary of this life; pray strangle me with your bough.” To which the rose bush responded: “I'm a rose and you’re a rose; I can't make such a vow.” So the princess proceeded to the jasmine bush, which responded in a similar manner. She visited all the different flower bushes before she arrived at the prickly bush, which had no compunction about sending one of its rough boughs around her neck and strangling her. The prince, who happened to be passing by soon after that, saw her dangling from the bush and recognized her. He was so upset at her death that he too asked the bush to strangle him, which it did. Finally, his bride, who came looking for him, found herself confronted by the sad spectacle of their dangling bodies. So she too asked the bush to strangle her and died by their side. All three were buried on the same day in three neighboring graves. Eventually, a beautiful rose bush grew on the princess's grave, while on that of the prince there emerged a sweet smelling jasmine. On the third grave, however, there grew only a prickly bush. And the people of that medina often heard a nightingale come to sit on a tree overlooking the graves. In its song it kept repeating: “The lover's with his beloved, but the prickly bush's none of it.” The very title “The Female Camel” foregrounds the specifically female dimension of this tale. The camel is a more precious beast of burden than the donkey or mule commonly used in the north of Morocco because its meat is edible and its wool is usable. It is also more valuable when it is female as it can also provide milk. The camel in this tale is not depicted as carrying burdens across the desert, but appears on a lush riverbank carrying a burden consisting of dirty dishes, which is specific to women, suggesting that the tale itself is about matters that are of special concern to women. That the tale relates the process involved in becoming a woman is suggested by the different stages that the princess in the tale traverses, which are basically three. The first is the one where she is hidden behind the seven h̄ijābs. The second consists of the episode when she is led outside by the old woman and witnesses the spectacle involving the female camel on the riverbank. The final stage is the one where the princess is forced to take on the disguise of the goat-skinned woman, which culminates in her suicide. What makes the tale an archetypal narrative of subject formation is the way the three stages can be read as corresponding to Lacan's Real, Imaginary and Symbolic orders, which the child traverses in the process of individuation.21 The seven ḣijābs, behind which the princess is hidden at the beginning, conform to the original and literal meaning of ḣijāb, which, according to Fatima Mernissi, is three dimensional: The first dimension is visual: to hide something from sight . . . The second dimension is spatial: to separate, to make a border, to establish a threshold. And finally the third dimension is ethical: it belongs to the realm of the forbidden.22 All three dimensions of the ḣijāb are apparent in the tale, where they are viewed from a specifically female perspective. Concerning the visual dimension, the ḣijāb is shown to be not only what hides the princess from sight, but also what hides from her the rest of the world, which only begins to be revealed to her in the Imaginary phase. The spatial dimension, which takes on a special significance in the Symbolic, is at this stage reminiscent of “the curtain behind which the caliphs and kings sat to avoid the gaze of members of their court.”23 This is what defines the princess as belonging to royalty rather than to the world of common people. This becomes significant in a tale that depicts a princess who escapes from behind her numerous ḣijābs to take part in the trials of common womanhood. The third dimension of the ḣijāb situates it within the whole of Sufi discourse, which people like the Sultan used to sanction their confinement of women — including their own daughters. By making use of such religious discourse to confine his daughter, the Sultan imposes a veil of subjectivity on her, which limits her view of both the reality around her and of her own self. To this extent, her experience behind the ḣijāb becomes representative of the Real order, within which the child has no means of coming to terms with reality as it actually is, particularly since the child at this stage has not yet acquired the language that would enable her to do so. Such confinement is what leads to the princess's illness, which takes on the dimensions of both a psychosis and a riddle. Only the old woman can solve this riddle, since she is the only one in a position to “see” what lies behind the ḣijābs and to “transgress” the boundaries they represent, thus enabling the princess eventually to come to terms with the reality that is her own self. She is also able to take hold of what Mernissi calls the “ethical dimension” of the ḣijāb, when she uses the same religious discourse that the Sultan uses to sanction his confinement of his daughter, against him. Her wisdom resides in the fact that she perceives such discourse to be both what helps to sanction the action of those in power and the site where that power can be contested. By assuring the Sultan that his daughter needs to visit a saint's shrine, she plays on the Sufi belief in saints, whom one could ask for intervention with all kinds of problems. By doing so the old woman takes on the role of both the midwife who delivers the princess from the womblike world behind the ḣijābs and the analyst who finds out what is ailing her by enabling her to express her wishes, which she satisfies, thus facilitating her passage into the next stage of her development. Once they go outside, the princess and the old woman find themselves in a world that is diametrically opposed to that behind the ḣijābs. This world, which enables the princess to make use of her visual capacity previously restricted by the ḣijāb, is characterized by wide open spaces and a flowing river, on the bank of which they end up sitting. The river here suggests that watery medium at the threshold of other-worldliness; however, this one doesn't include the world of jnoun often associated with water. Nor, for that matter, does it include saints or their shrines. The world in which they find themselves “frees them completely from all mysticism and piety. They are also completely deprived of the character of magic and prayer.”24 In this world they are able to view the spectacle of the female camel, emerging from under a rock, with its burden of dirty dishes. Dishwashing is not something that the princess would have had to do herself, any more than it is what camels normally do. However, it is what would have been performed regularly by many of the women in the audience, who would have derived pleasure vicariously from having the task performed effortlessly by the camel. What would have been even more enchanting about the camel's performance is the fact that by taking the dishes to be washed outside, the distinction between the domestic and the public worlds is blurred, as is that between the common servant and the princess, thus stressing the common lot of all women. However, even while dissolving the distinction between the different worlds involved, this phase places a specific emphasis on one temporal dimension, that of cyclical time. The emergence of the camel is a spectacle of special interest to the audience, stressing its festive nature that is “always essentially related to time, either to the recurrence of an event in the natural (cosmic) cycle, or to biological or historical timeliness.”25 The fact that this dimension is associated with cyclical time is furthermore suggested by the dishwashing itself, which, by reinforcing the idea of washing, recalls the ritual ablutions performed by women at specific phases in their lives, as after menstruation or childbirth. Such a notion of time as that suggested by ablutions, which mark the end of one phase and the beginning of another, reinforces the idea that this whole episode is itself a phase. The phase it represents becomes apparent when one considers that the river is what both the old woman and the princess are gazing into when the camel appears. Having enabled the princess both to escape from her confinement and to obtain a spectacle of the world at large, isn't the old woman now allowing her a perspective of another kind? Isn't the river the archetypal mirror into which the princess gazes to obtain an image of her own self? And isn't this what she perceives in the form of the female camel, which emerges to confront her? The phase suggested here is the one that conforms to Lacan's mirror stage, as the camel is both recognition and misrecognition —“méconnaissance”— of the self, which is why it is imaginary.26 In the tale the image perceived is even more illusory than the one suggested by Lacan, since it reflects not only the princess and the old woman, but also all the women in the audience. The collective image they perceive further suggests degradation in the status of the princess: “that is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, and abstract, to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity.”27 This becomes particularly evident when one considers that the princess, like the camel itself, is a more dignified being who has become burdened with the concerns of a common servant, enabling her to identify with the more comprehensive vision of womanhood she perceives, as it enables the women in the audience to identify with her. In this way the tale conforms to Bakhtin's theory of narrative as an: attempt to transform the relationship between performer and crowd in dialogic rituals so that spectators acquire the active role of participants in collective processes which are sometimes cathartic and which may symbolize or even create a community.28 By enabling such an identification between the spectators and the protagonist, this stage reveals itself to be the social Imaginary, which emphasizes the protagonist's profound identification with all that is around her, especially with the community of women involved in the storytelling, who belong to: “a monumental temporality, without cleavage or escape, which has so little to do with linear time.”29 The satisfaction she derives from the fact that she is one with all that is around her and forms an integral part of the community of women, explains why the princess, as well as the old woman, is eager to follow in the camel's footsteps and enter the next phase. When the princess and the old woman succeed in following the camel through the narrow passageway under the rock, they find themselves in an enchanting garden. This process recalls the Qur’anic aya, which states that only once the camel becomes capable of passing through the eye of the needle would it be possible for those who “reject our Signs and treat them with arrogance . . . to enter the Garden.”30 The two women here are evidently not among those who disregard the signs. Their ability to perform the difficult task of following the camel through the needle's eye, so to speak, confirms their moral impeccability and stresses the genuineness of their faith. The fact that the garden in which they find themselves depends on the interpretation of signs suggests that it is the Symbolic order itself. Unlike the world depicted in the previous phase, the one in which they find themselves now is not a natural space with a river, but a highly cultivated garden with fountains. The interpretation of signs is fore-grounded by the arrival of the two pigeons that dive into two different fountains, one of milk and the other of tar, and emerge as a white prince and his black servant. The fountains here represent much more socially constructed types of “mirrors” than the river in the previous stage. Rather than just enabling the pigeons to obtain a view of themselves by reflecting them, these “mirrors” completely reconstruct them into young men and according to specific social norms, which conform to the unfair dictates of power. In this phase, it is their difference that is stressed as it is essential to signification. This order thus reveals itself to be: “the social contract [which,] far from being that of equal men, is based on an essentially sacrificial relationship of separation and articulation of differences which in this way produces communicable meaning.”31 Whereas the previous stage — representative of the women's social Imaginary — stressed the sense of wholeness and feeling at one with nature, this stage — representative of the male Symbolic — becomes characterized from the beginning by difference and separation. It consists of two fountains that produce two very differently positioned social beings, where it is the powerlessness of the servant that highlights the power of the prince. Both are revealed to be signifiers; the prince being “le signifiant privilégié”32 who takes control of the situation when he orders the death of the old woman and then proceeds to seduce the princess. The old woman's death suggests the extent to which the Symbolic is fraught with danger for women. Its significance becomes evident when one considers that she is the mother figure who must be excluded from the Symbolic, which comes under the law of the father.33 Within this male order, the notion of subjectivity is much less communal than that which united the women in the previous stage. By killing the old woman, the prince separates the two women, thus depriving the princess of her communal sense of identity and facilitating her seduction. The fact that she is now within the Symbolic, or the order of language, is further confirmed by the way she and the prince talk and talk. This is what seduces her and transforms her, not only into a subject, but into one who is subjected to that order. Within this order, the princess becomes constructed into an image of femininity that, significantly, involves the loss of her original identity. The idea of loss begins to be apparent when she wakes up in the morning to find out that the enchanted garden has disappeared and she is alone in a wilderness where all that remains of the previous night is the bed of roses and narcissus. The symbolic significance of that bed would not have been lost on the adults in the audience, who would have grasped the fact that the princess had been deflowered. This becomes a good index of the extent to which “sex is . . . a symbolic arrangement structured like language.”34 It is at this stage that her identity becomes split, just as the world in which she finds herself becomes radically transformed from the beautifully cultivated garden into the wilderness. Here she feels obliged to adopt a mask, which marks her as a subject “divided by the effects of language.”35 Her entry into the Symbolic constitutes her not so much as an entity with an identity, but as a being split between two different versions of femininity: the idealized princess who is pure and virginal on one hand, and the goat woman suggestive of animal lust and a more demonic version of femininity, on the other. This division, however, is not what leads immediately to her death. She only kills herself much later, after traveling for some time and arriving at the “other”medina. Only after she discovers the prince and he gets married does she decide to commit suicide. What we have here is not just another version of the archetypal myth of the fall, but it could also be an original Muslim version of the tradition of courtly love. Here the erotic dimension is not entirely missing as it is in some of the European versions in which the knight idealizes a lady, often another man's wife, in a kind of Platonic relationship. The quest in this version is for legitimate sexual fulfillment, which prompts the protagonist to go in search of the prince and the possibility of a properly sanctioned relationship with him. What's interesting is that the courtly lover here — the equivalent of the European knight — is a Muslim woman. This narrative, which is a real tragedy, is also a cautionary tale. The protagonist is a member of royalty who has been degraded and drawn to a death that would have invoked the audience's pity and their terror, especially as she is led to it by forces that are essentially beyond her control and prompted by the fact that she is a woman. The women in the audience would have recognized similar possibilities of error in their own lesser selves, making the tragedy particularly cathartic. However, the tale does not end on the note of death. After they all die, the nightingale comes and sits on the graves to eulogize their love. Significantly, the tale ends on the note of narration, which continues after their deaths and is prompted by them, thus suggesting that it is a form of history. The notion of history is further stressed by the temporal dimension that characterizes this phase, which is not the cyclical time of the Imaginary phase, but “time as project, teleology, linear and prospective unfolding; time as departure, progression, and arrival — in other words, the time of history.”36 This notion of time conforms to that during which the princess sets out on her journey, a form of migration. A subtext becomes evident here when one considers that by assuming the disguise of a goat woman, the protagonist is shown to have been deprived of her ‘origins’ and to have taken on an ‘acquired identity’ which is less desirable. This looks very much like a Moriscan strategy demonstrating that the original and ideal identity — the one associated with the true faith — has had to be repressed as a mode of survival and due to circumstances that have forced on her a less desirable identity, which is why she dies. It is her insertion into historical time that leads to her death, since such a temporality implies the idea of both a beginning and an end; it renders explicit a rupture, and expectation, or an anguish which other temporalities work to conceal. It might also be added that this linear time is that of language considered as the enunciation of sentences . . . and that this time rests on its own stumbling block, which is also the stumbling block of that enunciation — death.37 Her entrance into the temporal linearity of historical time and the “[a]wareness of being imbedded in secular, serial time, with all its implications of continuity, yet of ‘forgetting’ the experience of this continuity . . . engenders the need for a narrative of ‘identity,’”38 which is what the tale provides. By ending on the note of narrativity, it calls attention to itself and the “imagined community” of women involved in its telling. Those are the women who, unlike the princess, were able to acquire the double vision which comes with reconciling between the different identities imposed on them, thus allowing them to inhabit multiple women's time — both cyclical time and the linear time of history — and to achieve “the demassification of the problematic of difference.”39 Like present-day postcolonial and feminist theorists, the women involved in telling the tale were seeking “to redefine the symbolic process through which the social imaginary — nation, culture or community — becomes the subject of discourse and the object of psychic identification.”40 Although their position as women within the male Symbolic was also fraught with danger, they could articulate themselves in ways that were not accessible to the princess — they could both express the kind of dilemma she faced and also survive it — thus keeping the spirit of the past alive through their ability to transform the Symbolic to their own ends.