David Heiller
I had a lot of memorable
experiences when I was in the Peace Corp from 1977-1979, but one of them has
always stood out in my mind. I’m thinking about it a lot these days.
I taught English as a
second language in Morocco, which is a Muslim country of primarily Arab people
on the northwestern corner of Africa. For a few months I rented the bottom
level of a house in the middle of the city from an elderly Moroccan couple, Fatna
and Driss. They lived upstairs.
They took me under their
wing, so to speak, and we became good friends, as good as a Moroccan family
could be to an American guy. There were a lot of cultural and religious
barriers that prevented what I would consider real closeness.
I moved to another house
on the edge of the city because I felt too claustrophobic in the middle of the
bustling medina. But I kept in touch with my Moroccan family. Every Friday,
which is their holy day, they would invite me to a noon dinner. It was great
for me. I not only got a delicious meal, usually couscous, I also got to visit
with my friends.
I spoke “derizha,” which
was the name for dialectal Arabic. Some people called it “low Arabic.” Every
Arab country has its own version of “low Arabic.” It is a totally different
language than high Arabic or classical Arabic, which is the Arabic taught in
school or found in books. One day after our Friday noon meal, Fatna and I were
sitting and visiting. The radio was on. The broadcast was in classical Arabic,
which I could not understand.
I asked Fatna what they
were saying. “Mon-arf,” she said with a hint of resignation in her voice. I don’t
know.
“What do you mean you
don’t know?” I asked in derizha. My voice probably had a startled tone
to it, because I was perplexed.
“I can’t understand it,”
she went on. “I can’t speak classical Arabic.”
Fatna told me that she
never went to school, and was not taught how to read or recite the Koran, which
is where most schooling starts for Moroccan children. But it was more than the
lack of schooling that bothered me, it was that a society and a system did not
care to educate or include people like Fatna. It was a very simple and
effective way to subjugate her, keep her in her place. And not just her,
obviously, but many others like her. If you can’t even understand the language
of knowledge and power, you will remain ignorant and powerless.
Things were changing in
Morocco back then, and perhaps Fatna was the vestige of a dying generation. But
my hunch is there are still a lot of Fatnas throughout the Morocco countryside,
and in many less-progressive Arab countries than that. Yes, Morocco was
considered a progressive Arab country, with decent civil rights and many Western
influences. Much more so than Iraq, for example.
How long will it take a
country like Morocco to become what we consider a democracy, where people like
Fatna can participate, understand, read, vote? They’ve been working on it for
1,000 years and they have not succeeded, and they would not succeed if we came
in with 150,000 troops and said, “We’ll help you change?’
They have to want to
change, and they don’t want to.
It’s very discouraging to
me these days because of the war in Iraq. I hear people talk about bringing
democracy and freedom to Iraq, and I think of Fatna, and the society that kept
her from school, from the mosque, from even understanding the language that
half of her country spoke.
It might sound good to
say, “Let’s make it better.” But it won’t happen unless it comes from within
the people of Iraq, or Morocco, or any other country you choose. I’m convinced
of that, and all the White House propaganda in the world won’t convince me
otherwise.
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