The following is my final essay that I turned in for Dr. Ennaji’s class on Moroccan Social Movements.
The literature surrounding Moroccan Independence and Colonialism spreads over multiple formats, genres, and, most importantly, languages. The legacy of French Colonialism has been recorded by both Western and Moroccan voices, with different opinions regarding the outcome. This essay will examine the confluence of these writers.
I will first analyze three works written in prose. The first is a novella written in Arabic by a Moroccan woman. The next two are both written in English and written by American men. These differences noted, I will examine a similar theme that appears in each; specifically, the way fertile land is used to display nostalgia for a homeland that has been lost or altered dramatically.
The results of these investigations in mind, I will then examine three Moroccan poems translated from Arabic and Amazigh into English. In these poems, I am interested in how the concept of taken land differs from the prose pieces. Through all of these works– both prose and poem– land is important because sustenance is gained from it. I am most interested in the way this appears in all of these works, regardless of author’s language, origin, or mode of writing.
First, I will look at the novella Year of the Elephant, by Leila Abouzeid. It is the story of a woman’s struggle to overcome feelings of abandonment after her husband divorces her. More than that, it also chronicles the woman’s involvement in the Moroccan Independence movement, as she remembers smuggling weapons and information to other members of the movement. Throughout the novella, her anger with her husband is heavily linked to her disillusionment with Independence. What interest me, however, about the novella is the following passage where the main character describes her hometown before she left it with her husband:
In this valley at the foot of the mountains were mulberries, pomegranates, cherry orchards and olive groves. The plain was a narrow patchwork sown with melons, cucumbers and corn. The Atlas mountains towered above us, their slopes honeycombed with waterfalls, lakes and wonderous caverns. Those who knew Granada said our town was similar in its setting and verdure, but here money was harder to come by, for orchards were our one resource. In the orchards, our menfolk sacrificed their lives; indeed many were killed at night while irrigating. Orchard thieves put us and our Berber mayor through hell, and, though the town prison was full of them, they kept coming. (Abouzeid, page 12).
The passage begins with a litany of fruits and vegetables, showing that the land around her home was fertile and bountiful. Adding to this is the next sentence, which describes the land as having plentiful water as well. Beyond this, Abouzeid then links the home of her character with Granada, which taps into a broader Moroccan nostalgia for Andalusia; after the Spanish Reconquista of the 15th century, Andalusian Arabs fled to Morocco, as well as Spain’s Jewish population. By creating this link, Abouzeid is creating an equally nostalgic sense for the character’s homeland. This is finally driven home by the ultimate sentences of the passage, which show the importance of the land by describing men willing to die to protect the land or be locked up for a taste of it.
This contrasts sharply to the home the main character returns to, which has lost its orchards during Indpendence. Though it is a minor facet of the story, this passage is important because it shows Abouzeid using a technique of describing a bountiful land to demonstrate nostalgia. This patter, as we will see, will be repeated in the next two passages.
In his book The Riffian, Carleton Coon created a character based off a man from Northern Morocco that he knew and was friends with. Coon, an American anthropologist, wrote the book after finishing his dissertation on this man and his people. The character in the story is of the same people, but has never been to the North, having been born in Fez. Still, over the course of the story he feels a yearning to return his homeland, which he describes in great detail despite having never been there. Often, his descriptions are tinged with the same kind of nostalgia that was present in Year of the Elephant, such as in this passage:
It is beautiful there, my country… There are fig trees, and almonds, and olives, and in the winter you can see the tracks of wild boar in the snow. No Arabs ever come there and no Jews, and– if God is willing– no Christians. (Coon, page 71)
Here, the focus is again on the abundance of food in the region. It is also interesting that it is a point of pride for the main character that only Amazigh go there, while the two other major ethnicities of Morocco do not, nor do colonizers. On its own, it seems an interesting moment, but it is important for the way it uses the same nostalgic devices as Abouzeid’s work.
Finally, I want to look at the titular character in William Eastlake’s “The Last Frenchman of Fez.” In this story, the narrator meets a French colon, or a French citizen born in Morocco. In the wake of Independence, the colon still clings to many aspects of colonialism, such as refusing to leave Fez’s French Quarter and enter the Old Medina. However, one particularly difficult pill for the colon to swallow is his farm being taken away from him by the nationalist government. When the narrator asks him about the farm, the Frenchman responds with the following passage:
It was one thousand hectares stolen from the desert. Not the Moroccans, not stolen from them, but stolen from the desert. When they stole it from me it was as green as absinthe. I grew mint, cork oaks, oranges, olives, artichokes, wine grapes, dates and eucalyptus, all as green as absinthe. Now, Monsieur, now it is– I will take you there tomorrow and you can see. (Eastlake, page 199)
Again, we can see the emphasis here on the goods produced on this land and how fertile it is. Moreover, there is an emphasis on the work the colon’s family put into making the farm– it was stolen from the desert, not Morocco. This is all used by Eastlake to demonstrate the colon’s bitter feelings about Independence, and his nostalgia for land that was taken away from him.
The past section has shown how land’s fertility is often used in prose about Morocco to show a kind of nostalgia, especially in relation to Independence. In this section, I will examine how this translates into Moroccan poetry. First, I would like to look at an untitled poem by Tawgrat Walt Aissa N’Ayt Sokhman, during which these lines appear:
The unfaithful came and drank from the oak spring,
And without fear, tied up their horses,
They fixed the stakes and said now we are neighbors.
(Sokhman, lines 8-10. Translator: Moha Ennaji)
Though it is not as extensive as previous quotes, there is still an emphasis on land within these lines. The poet resents the “unfaithful” French for using the land of Morocco, giving it to their horses, and sectioning off parts of it as theirs. Nostalgia, however, does not play a role here. Instead, the only feeling seems to be anger about colonialism. It is important, though, that this anger is still reflected in relation to a land that is taken away from the poet, as in the other pieces.
The next poem, titled “The Affront” by Mrirrda N’Ayt Atiq, is unique because it is not directly related to Moroccan Independence. Instead, it is addressed to the poet’s mother-in-law. Judging by the poem, however, it could be argued that the figure of the mother-in-law is a ready stand-in for French Colonizers, a reading made interesting by the following passage:
Not the smallest souvenir have I kept
Of my exhaustion from work in the fields,
Of the loads that bent my back,
Of the pitchers that left marks on my shoulders,
Of burned fingers from making bread,
Of the leftover bones that your son
Used to give me on feast days.
(Atiq, “The Affront,” lines 9-15. Translator: Fatima Sadiqi)
Here, the fertility of land is not emphasized, but rather the hard-work the poet had to put into the land for it to produce. This is coupled with both the physical pain the poet endured during this labor, as well as the way she was forced to share the gains of her work with her husband. Though it is doing so from a different angle, this passage is important for the way it still emphasizes food and the land that produces it, just as in the other passages.
The final piece I will be analyzing is “Song One,” by Rubha Moha. This poem explores themes we have seen before, but this time in the context of a city. As the poem is short, here it is in its entirety:
I want to tell you
What big buildings
The French have built
In Meknes city.
They have decorated the buildings
With rich-looking marble floors.
Let us take buckets
And ask for food
From the French,
And eat soup since
They give it to us
For free.
(Moha, “Song One.” Translator: Fatima Sadiqi)
The colonial conflict here is the building of the French Quarter in the city of Meknes, which the poet witnessed. This fits with the other passages because in building a new Quarter, the French too both land and ownership over the city from Moroccans. At the end of this poem, the poet suggest begging for food from the French. This too is linked to the previous passages, especially those depicting bountiful landscapes. The poet seems to imply that with the coming of the new buildings that take up land, the Moroccans are unable to grow as much food. This creates a link between colonialism and starvation, and fits in with the importance of food in the earlier passages.
What links all of these pieces together is the importance of food in each. Food is used as a means of showing the worth of a land and why characters and poets love that land. By extension, when the land is taken away, so is the source of the bounty. In the prose pieces I have analyzed, this link is clearly established. In the poetry, however, it is more of an implied link.
This difference, however, also fits with the differences between how these two styles interact with colonialism. The prose pieces deal more with Independence, and as such they contain more about the bounty of a land that is gone, and the memory of that land creates a nostalgia. The poems, on the other hand, focus on the bitterness of colonialism, and bounty, therefore, is not mentioned, only pain and loss.
Works Cited
- Abouzeid, Leila. Trans. Barbara Parmenter. The Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Woman’s Journey Toward Independence and Other Stories. Texas; Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin (1989).
- Coon, Carleton S. Edit. Khalid Bekkaoui. The Riffian. Fez, Morocco; The Moroccan Cultural Studies Centre (2006).
- Eastlake, William. “The Last Frenchman in Fez.” From Imagining Morocco: An Anthology of Anglo-American Short Narratives. Edit. Khalid Bekkaoui. Fez, Morocco; The Moroccan Cultural Studies Centre (2008).
The three poems appeared in the following anthology:
- Ennaji, Moha, Azza El Kholy, Amira Nowaira, and Fatima Sadiqi. Women Writing Africa: the Northern Region. New York; Feminist Press at the City University of New York the Graduate Center (2009).