A Wedding To Remember

Yesterday I experienced what I believe is a perfect depiction of the ever present integration process in the Peace Corps.

It was the first day of my host sister Kadija’s wedding, which, like most Moroccan weddings, is a multi-day event (4 days in this case) of the same thing every day. The celebration began in the early morning with a cow slaughter, which I conveniently slept through. I arrived at around 11am, going straight to the men’s house (in Islamic weddings the men and women are always split up), which consisted of a room full of elder Berber men chanting verses from the Koran. Not seeing any members of my host family present aside my 95 year old host grandfather,(who’s dialogue with me usually consists of nothing more than him pointing at questionable hunks of meat and grunting, indicating that I should eat it) I decided to explore elsewhere in search of a recognizable face.

Fortunately I ran into my host brother who was busy running around preparing the first cow feast of the day, and offered to help cut up cow liver as to give myself something to do. I spent a good hour sitting outside of the house of men, cutting away as men in jelabas walked in, shook hands of familiar faces, and each looked at me as if I were a tap dancing dog(a white guy cutting up a cow liver for a wedding probably looks even more atypical). The anonymity of my presence was cured once I saw my host father, who immediately came up to me and said “fin kayn l howli?” or “where is the sheep”? Ah yes, his favorite joke, constantly insisting that I bring a sheep to the house to slaughter. Parents...

This lunch, of course, was carried on in nothing but an expected fashion for a Moroccan wedding. The real integration began at nightfall. As I pulled up to the back entrance to the man house, a subtle feeling of confusion took over as I heard no noise coming from the house which I was told would be packed with people. I did however hear loud music and dancing protruding from the other house belonging to my host family (they are wealthy), which is separated by a spacious garden and a tool shed which must be walked through to get there. Naturally, I followed the music through the dark to the other house. As I approached, the music got louder and louder, along with the voices of women. Slightly intimidated, I crept up to the back door and stuck my head in to see what was happening.

The room was PACKED with woman; all dressed in flashy Berber garments, and all chatting and laughing, very much in party mode. Before I had a chance to turn around and make an escape, my 90 year old host grandmother noticed me standing diffidently at the entrance, and ran up to me like a bat out of hell. Not only was it a shock to see her run, but the mere fact that she acknowledged me was astounding, in that prior to this interaction the most her and I had exchanged were mere greetings, in that she only speaks Tamazight and we thus share no common language. Without hesitation, she grabbed my arm and dragged my inside, immediately grabbing the attention of all the women (roughly 50 of them), who proceeded stare me down as if I were the first white man they had ever seen (which for many of them I surly was).

Incarcerated by the death grip of grandma, I had no choice but to follow her into the next room, which had even MORE women in it, sitting in a large circle around two others, who were dancing in a way I had never before seen, strutting back and forth and shaking their asses in unison. Before they even had time to take note of my presence (yet still in plenty of time for me to take note of how much I didn’t belong there) I was thrust into the center of the circle with my grandmother, who at this point was yelling “shta!”, or “dance!”(Maybe the one word she knows in Arabic). I had no choice but to give in and dance, letting her lead me. Fortunately, the basic Berber dance is very simple, and requires just moving from side to side and lifting both palms, face up, to your chest and back down to your knees repetitively. The women started to howl and cheer much louder than they already were before I entered, giving me the feeling of a developing country male stripper. After what seemed like hours of this(yet was probably about 30 seconds), I saw one of my younger host sisters and made my escape, running up to her and asking where the men were and if she could please take me to them. It turned out that they were, in fact, still in the same house that they had been in before, only much quieter than the women. Before this night I had heard about the superiority of women’s section to the men’s during wedding celebrations, and seeing the two side by side gave this fact the utmost lucidity.

Upon entering the house of men, I made my way around the hoards to a back room where I was told to sit next to a giant man with a beard by my host cousin. According to him this man was basketball coach whom I was told I would speak with regarding doing some work with the local men’s team. I sat down amidst the 30 or so men in the room, and immediately heard the word “Merikani” whispered around throughout, accompanied by some glances and many blatant stares. This was nothing that was uncommon for me, so I did what I normally do, which was introduce myself and begin talking in Arabic to ease the awkwardness. Once some basic conversation had begun and food was served, things seemed to be going smoothly until the post meal prayer, during which I asked the bearded giant next to be about the basketball team, not realizing that the entire house had become silent and there want someone in the next room reading a verse of the Koran. It was as if to say “Hey, in case anyone here didn't realized it, I’m not a Muslim!”

While such occurrences are by no means an oddity in life here, I feel that the documentation of them of them is a necessity, in hope that one day I can look back on all of this and say “Wow...I really had some balls when I lived in Morocco.”