TRAVEL MEMOIR
Wake Up, Have Tea, Do The Rug
Life as a woman in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco
A running joke during my Master's degree in Gender Studies was the question: Can the subaltern speak?
Nobody knew, nobody understood the essay under this title. Apparently, it was extremely insightful and foundational to post-colonial theory. But it was also completely illegible, and so we finished our degrees, accepting we’d never know the answer.
A decade later, travelling the world, I met “the subalterns” — people without voice or power in post-colonial countries — and finally understood the point of this question. Luckily, without having to read the article. Just observing and connecting the dots.
I joined the “Women’s Expedition” in Morocco with the intention of hiking. Accommodation in local communities, advertised as a highlight, was a trade-off I was willing to tolerate. But it was a highlight. The hike, through a dry and monotonous landscape, became just a way to get from village to village: a few houses of clay and straw, some of them not even on the map. And there, I met women I’d otherwise never meet.
Connecting the dots
We stayed in the houses of Amazigh people, also known as Berbers — the indigenous people of North Africa, pre-dating the Arab conquest. The trip description promised “connecting with the local community” by seeing Amazigh women performing their activities.
Once, a young village woman, perhaps in her twenties, came to paint henna on our hands. Two older women accompanied her, left when she started work, and came back at the end. Curious about everything, I asked our guide if the older woman was making sure the young one did her job properly. But the guide said they were escorts. A young wife couldn’t leave home alone and risk encountering any men on her way.
Obviously, we didn’t comment on it at the moment, but discussed it in our group later. Crazy, wasn’t it? Just imagine.
That’s when I started to get it: someone can explain a custom to me and I can make sense of it, but it will be my sense. If I asked the woman, would I understand how she makes sense of it herself?
What would I ask? Maybe if she were okay with it. If it wasn’t insulting or suffocating. If it was convenient, to have an escort. Reassuring, for someone to check there were no men in the room before she entered. These would all be my ideas. Her experience could be totally outside of this spectrum, on a scale whose measuring units don’t translate to mine.
I could not connect with the people: I could observe, ask questions and connect the dots. But the dots were in my head only.
Very, very simple
Our guide asked us to behave thoughtfully (wear long trousers, not smoke or drink, cover tattoos), to respect the Amazigh people's “very, very simple” life. Here, too, we didn’t speak the same language: our guide said “simple”, I heard “patriarchal”. A world where women’s rights are an invention, adding unnecessary complexity to a natural order.
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Take engagement, for example. A man spots a girl, aged 12 to 18, as wife material. He tells his mother about her, who then enquires about marriage with her parents. If they agree, the couple can get acquainted: have a few meetings in the presence of an elder and ask each other interview-style questions. While parents settle the marriage logistics, the girl prepares her own bridal present — the rug.
She will weave it for months. Day in, day out. As our guide put it: if you’re engaged, you wake up, you have tea, and you do the rug.
Life is different for a man. The birth of a boy is a joy for the family. Young boys hang out and play outside. They wear T-shirts and sneakers, ride bikes, play football, and ask hikers for sweets. Men drive to their jobs in the city. In the evening, they meet up to play cards and music, or watch sports together.
Women don’t drive. They don’t leave the house. At home, with their mother-in-law, they do chores and childcare. Very, very simple.
The new bride
She emerged from one of the rooms and passed by, quiet, eyes on the floor. As soon as I could, I asked our guide: " Why was this girl’s dress so beautiful? In a low voice, our guide disclosed that she was a new bride.
She started the rug-weaving demonstration. The guide explained the mechanism, and I gasped out loud when I understood the amount of work that goes into one rug. Months, sometimes years, the guide confirmed.
She showed me how to weave, and I still couldn’t do it. Counter-clockwise, through, counter-clockwise, close. Very, very simple. Not for me. She could show me how to loop a strand of wool, one of the hundreds of thousands she’ll need to loop to finish her rug. She couldn’t show me how it was to wake up, have tea, and have just this rug to weave, for the whole day, for the whole life.
Can she speak?
I watched the girl, her humble eyes and nimble fingers, and couldn’t stop thinking about what she was thinking. Who does she compare herself to? Does she see men hanging out outside? Does she watch TV? Does she have an opinion about her life at all?
What would she answer if I asked her?
Somebody asked for a picture.
Somebody from the group wanted to take a photo of the teenage bride with her rug, and our guide asked for permission. The girl faltered. Her only answer was to look towards the man standing in the doorway. It wasn’t even her husband; it was her brother-in-law. But he was a man, and as such, he had an answer. And an opinion.
The girl didn’t say anything herself. She didn’t have to, for one. For two, she didn’t even know what to say.
