MOROCCO ADOLESCENTS INA SMALL TOWN

MOROCCO:ADOLESCENTS

IN A SMALL TOWN1

Susan Schaefer Davis

Portraits TOC

She should marry him….She’s the one who knows himbetter. She went out with him so she understands him;they know about life. Parents don’t know what’s goingon between them. Parents don’t understand thosethings, they only know the old way of doing things. Butwe know the modern way of life.

Do readers expect Moroccan adolescent girls to talk like thisseventeen-year-old? Or does “Morocco” call forth exoticimages of palm oases in the Sahara, the Foreign Legion,

and silent women in veils, or perhaps Bogart and Bergman inRick’s Cafe in wartime Casablanca?

Adolescents in Morocco in the mid-1980s resembled theirAmerican counterparts in some ways, and were quite different inothers. I will illustrate this by describing Moroccan behavior andideas on issues that are important to both groups. These issuesinclude conflict with parents and degree of autonomy, andmale/female differences in work, freedom, and relationships witheach other. Young women’s control of their own lives and howadolescents become adults are also important aspects of adoles-cence in Morocco.

SETTING THE SCENE

Morocco is located on the northwest corner of Africa, a short tripacross the Straits of Gibraltar from Spain. In climate and size,Morocco resembles California; there are chilly, wet winters andhot, dry summers. Beaches on the Mediterranean and Atlanticcoasts give way to plains and mountain ranges, and finally desertin the far south. The population is Arab and Berber and almostcompletely Muslim.

These adolescents live in the small Arab town of Zawiya, locat-ed at the edge of an agricultural plain in the north central part ofthe country, about thirty miles from the city of Meknes. Living in asmall town has important effects on the lives of these adolescents;they have somewhat less exposure to modern lifestyles and conve-niences than city-dwellers but more than their cousins in isolatedrural villages.2 While no one of these three groups is typical, manyMoroccans today live in small and medium-sized towns. Zawiyateens can walk two miles to the larger town of Kabar or take thetrain or bus to visit relatives in Rabat or Casablanca. They watchthe government television station seen nationwide, and a few have

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cable TV. There are a primary school and junior high in town, anda mayor’s office, post office, and police station, but no banks, hos-pitals, high schools, or restaurants. One can buy fruit, vegetables,and meat in several shops, and staples like oil, tea, and sugar, butmost clothing and appliances are purchased in the larger town orat the weekly outdoor market. Zawiya has grown rapidly, fromabout five thousand in 1970 to twelve thousand in the mid-1980s.Many families moved into town from nearby rural areas, and thatbackground reinforces traditional values.

Morocco is a constitutional monarchy led by Hassan II, a kingwith real power, whose father took over when the French leftMorocco in 1956. He is assisted by a cabinet which he appoints anda popularly elected parliament. Local officials include an appointedmayor and an elected town council. Government employees staffmany offices and the schools, and offer a model of white-collar jobsto which many adolescents aspire. Parents, on the other hand,work mostly in blue-collar service jobs, often related to agriculture,and many grandparents were farmers. The Moroccan economy isbased in agriculture, with citrus fruits and cereals the main crops.Both oranges and wheat, as well as olives and vegetables, aregrown near Zawiya. However, large landowners now control near-by farms and use mechanized equipment, and few local peoplework directly in agriculture; those who do are mostly day laborers.Some drive trucks to transport crops, some sell produce locally,and others work in jobs like construction or painting.

Zawiya families describe each other as well-off, average, orpoor. The first group has members in a profession like law (whousually live in a larger city), the second white-collar workers, mer-chants, or others with a regular income, and the third has memberswho do manual work or who cannot find jobs. While incomes vary,Zawiya lifestyles are quite similar. Most residents live in concretehouses on unpaved streets, and until 1988 had no running waterand had to carry their supply from seven outdoor taps. Yet nearlyall households have electricity, and the majority have television.Thus while social classes do exist, and there is variation in totalwealth, actual lifestyles do not vary as widely as they do in urbansettings.

Most families in Zawiya consist of parents and children,3 oftenwith a grandparent or cousin added. While typical Arab familiesare thought to be extended, with grandparents, parents, and chil-dren all in one household, we found this rare in Zawiya. When itoccurred, it was usually at the start of a marriage, while a couple

4 PORTRAITS OF CULTURE

saved money for their own home. Another Arab custom, cousinmarriage, was also rare in Zawiya, where the majority of marriageswere not to relatives, even in the parental generation.

Marriages arranged by parents are still the norm, althoughyoung people are having more input. The quotation I began withillustrates this tension; I had asked what a couple should do if par-ents opposed their marriage. In the past, a boy’s parents looked fora wife for their son, and his mother would visit her family toobserve their behavior and see the girl. She would report back tothe son, the families would inquire about each other, and if all wassatisfactory the marriage took place. The goal was a partnershipbetween two economically similar and compatible families;romance between the bride and groom, who frequently did notknow each other, was not a factor, although a strong bond oftendeveloped. There were also alternatives for dissatisfied youngwomen: they could run away from a marriage that they opposed4

or go back to their family if the relationship was intolerable. Today,marriages are still arranged by parents, but a young man may askhis mother to approach a certain girl’s parents. Girls’ families can-not initiate the process, but girls are asked whether they accept ornot, and the girl often knows the boy (though she may not admitit). Dating is not accepted in Zawiya, which makes gettingacquainted challenging, but young people do manage.

Zawiya’s adolescents and their families live in a rapidly chang-ing world. Grandparents farmed the land; their children may workin France, and Morocco is part of the world economy. Grandparentsrarely saw a car; adolescents take trains to the capital. There used tobe no electricity; now all watch television, which shows snow inEurope, something grandparents had only heard about, and Dallas,and men on the moon. Rural families lived in extended familygroups: now each family lives alone, so most young women do nothave to serve an exacting mother-in-law in residence. Only a fewparents attended school;5 most adolescents attended primary schooland many go on. Boys and girls study together, and this, plus thewalk to high school in town, gives young people a chance to getacquainted in ways that were less common in the past. Educationalso opens up white-collar jobs for both sexes, and in cities one seesoffice plaques for women doctors, dentists, and lawyers, somethingrare until the 1980s.

Margaret Mead thought rapid change between generationswas one basis for the adolescent rebellion and conflict between the

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generations common in the United States. She did not find conflictin relatively unchanged Samoa, where parental knowledge andskills were still relevant for their children.6 By Mead’s standards,the rapid change in Zawiya should lead to intergenerational con-flict. I will examine this below.

DATA COLLECTION

When I read an ethnography, knowing who collected the data andhow helps me evaluate the results. Further, anthropologists (andothers) now recognize the fact that there is no one “objectivetruth”; results are inevitably colored by the researcher and themethodology. A simple example is that my husband and I couldnot have gained the great cooperation we did with our research inZawiya if I had not first been in the Peace Corps there and becomean accepted part of the community. Later I did my Ph.D. researchon women’s roles in Zawiya.7 People knew and trusted us frombefore, so they agreed to take part in our study of adolescence,answering personal questions and welcoming us into their homes.

Our study of Zawiya was part of the Harvard AdolescenceProject, in which researchers collected comparable data in sevencultures.8 We collected anthropological, sociological, and psycho-logical data on about one hundred Zawiya adolescents and theirfamilies. The data included participant observation of adolescentsand their families; this was facilitated by our living in a house inthe neighborhood we studied. Because I first went to Zawiya in1965 and had maintained contact since then, by 1982 my husbandand I were seen almost as aunt and uncle to several local families.Our daughter was five in 1982, and having a child made us “nor-mal,” while setting up a preschool for her in our home put us intomore contact with local families.

We first visited families and explained the study, asking theircooperation. We included young people from nine to twenty-one,and weighed, measured, and filled out a sociological questionnaireplus a school and family history for each of over one hundredyoung people. We gave psychological tests of cognitive develop-ment9 and gender identity to about sixty, and did open-endedinterviews on a group of about twenty with whom we had espe-


cially good rapport. Three-quarters of the interviews were withfemales, because I did most of them and had better rapport withgirls. I returned in 1984 and updated these interviews, using a taperecorder in a private setting, and most of the material quotedbelow comes from these interviews. I asked young people whatwas important to them recently, what they hoped for in the future,how they had changed in the last two years, about their relation-ships and conflicts with parents, and about a personal dilemmaand an imaginary one concerning marriage. My more general state-ments are based in observations of and interactions with families,and from conversations over a period of twenty years.

ADOLESCENT LIFE

On the surface, adolescent life in Zawiya appears more tranquilthan that in the United States. There are few angry exchanges withparents, and no slammed doors or “grounded” teens. If they arestudents, both boys and girls work hard; they see education as thepath to a white-collar job with a good income.10 For those of prima-ry school age (under fifteen) in Zawiya, sixty-three percent of girlsand eighty-two percent of boys attended school (and ninety-twopercent had at one time); twenty-three percent of girls and forty-eight percent of boys were in high school. There is a large drop-offin attendance after primary school, partly because many fail thedifficult final exam and also because older children can often helptheir families by working. The lower attendance of girls is mainlybecause they help their mothers at home; boys do not. Girls whoare students bear a double burden, of housework and homework,unless they have an older sister who’s already left school and helpsat home. By sixteen, most Zawiya girls have the necessary skills torun a household, including baking bread, cooking, washing byhand, cleaning, and child-care; in this way they are ahead of mostof their American counterparts and often their city cousins.

In their leisure time, Zawiya teens watch television, includingEgyptian, French, and American nighttime shows (includingDallas, Little House on the Prairie, and The Incredible Hulk) andJapanese and Disney cartoons in Arabic or French, and listen tocassettes of Arabic songs, Berber dancing, and western reggae,

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rock, and country music. Boys and girls may study together athome, girls may go to a girlfriend’s house to visit or embroider,and boys may play soccer or go to a movie in town. Walking to thehigh school in town and running errands or collecting water inZawiya give boys and girls a chance to meet and talk. In general,girls stay closer to home and boys go further afield.

ADOLESCENTS AND CONFLICT

We observed adolescents with their families and asked the inter-view group about conflicts with their parents, usually mothers, aswell as their relationship in general. Most young people said theirrelationships were “good,” although one boy and two girls said“so-so.” I should explain that it is improper to discuss family prob-lems with outsiders in Morocco, so that in general one wouldn’texpect to hear a lot about conflicts. Yet the behavior we observed infamilies we knew well, the general relations between parents andteens, and the examples of conflict teens gave all support the ideathat overt conflict is not common nor severe.

One thing that struck us immediately was the difference inAmerican and Moroccan reactions when we said we were going tostudy adolescents: they reflected cultural expectations. MostAmericans winced or groaned and said they didn’t envy us, deal-ing with that age group. There was no such reaction in Zawiya,and only a few upper class urban Moroccans responded that way.

I learned about ideal and problematic relations with parentswhen I asked what were the best and worst things that could hap-pen between a teen and his or her parents. I made the questionhypothetical so teens didn’t feel they had to describe themselves.The best thing was usually to obey one’s parents, and sometimes togive them money or gifts and take care of them. The worst was todisobey them, or to be seen speaking intensely to someone of theopposite sex, which would greatly upset parents and ruin theirtrust in you.

A few examples of conflicts give a clearer picture. I askedMajda, who was nineteen years old and had a primary education,about her relationship with her mother, and whether it hadchanged recently.11

Our relations are good. We talk about my craft [embroi-


dery]; I like talking about it. We talk about her family, mymother’s family. We’re on good terms, very good terms.

S. Has your relationship changed since you’ve gotten older?

Well, since my brothers have been around there’s some has-sle. We keep squabbling, and one hits the other and so on.Sometimes my mother wants me to grab my brother andspank him…. He refuses to do his homework; he goes out ordoes something nasty. He gets her angry, so she tells me tohit him, and she curses: “May God do this to you, may Goddo that to you.” She keeps on insulting me, but I really don’tpay any attention to her, because it’s him [the brother] whogets on her nerves.

In another family I observed a shouted argument between agirl of sixteen and her pregnant mother. The mother asked Fatihato run down the street and buy some mint for tea, and Fatiharefused, saying she was tired and that her mother should go.After each giving the other several reasons why that one shouldgo, the mother went. The interaction displayed a level of opendisrespect for parents that was rare, but soon afterward the twowere chatting in a friendly way; there appeared to be no after-math.

Three young women told me that their relationship with theirmothers was so good that in fact it was like she was not theirmother; such relations seemed particularly relaxed. Aisha, aneighteen-year-old secondary student, said

It is as if she were not my mother. That is, I am not inhibitedby her or anything like that. She is like my sister or myfriend. I tell her things. For example, I tell her what a guysays to me when I am on my way back [from school], andwe laugh…. When I was still young, I used to be inhibitedby her; I couldn’t tell her a joke, for example. I couldn’t tellher dirty jokes…now I can tell her…. About two years ago orso, we started talking about everything and laughing…. It’sbecause I’ve grown up, and inhibition flew away.

Fatiha, who fought with her mother about fetching the mint,was a sixteen-year-old who had dropped out after primaryschool. She was one of the three teens who said they had “so-so”relationships with their mothers.

Sometimes, when my mother insults me or hits me or does

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anything to me, I get upset really fast, and if I could find aknife I would stab myself or do something…. I cannotanswer her back or raise my hand to her or anything. I justoffer myself to her. I also feel like jumping off a cliff…. I can-not answer her back. Even if she beats me up, I don’t cry; Ihold back my tears, even if I feel pain…. I just keep quietuntil I am by myself in a solitary place, and then I cry.

When I asked Fatiha what would be a bad thing to happenbetween a mother and daughter, she gave me a personal examplethat may sound familiar to Americans.

For example, I tell my mother to dress up more. You knowMrs. S. [a neighbor]: she fixes her hair, changes clothes oftenand all the rest. But my mother looks older than Mrs. S.,even though Mrs. S. is older. Mrs. S. is older than my grand-mother, and my mother looks older than Mrs. S. My motherdoes not take good care of herself. Even though I tell her tofix her hair and change clothes, she doesn’t want to; I don’tknow why. As for Mrs. S., you could take her for a girl.

Fatiha’s mother’s account makes the story even more famil-iar, when she complains that Fatiha wants to buy several newoutfits monthly, and when the mother claims it’s her turn “Shealways wants fancy clothes. She wants to dress well, but her par-ents do not matter.”

Finally, when I asked Fatiha what nice thing could happenbetween her and her mother, she said “Nothing nice ever hap-pens between us.”

This last example should not overshadow the generally goodrelationships between young people and their parents. We did notsee high levels of confrontation or tension between the generations.Yet Margaret Mead’s work would lead us to expect many disagree-ments because rapid social change makes the knowledge and expe-rience of parents often irrelevant to teens. They need to know howto study in school and get around on trips to the city, while theirparents know when to plant wheat and how to churn buttermilk.

Several aspects of traditional Moroccan culture work to limitconflicts with parents. One is the respect for age that still predomi-


nates. Even very urban Moroccans are shocked at the idea of olderrelatives living apart in a “home,” as they hear happens inAmerica. Thus it is disrespectful to question or disagree with yourparents because of their ages, and in addition, they deserverespect for raising you. Another factor is the greater importance ofthe family group in Morocco, as opposed to the importance of theindividual and their autonomy in American culture. Moroccanteens often work toward goals that will benefit the whole family,such as completing their education so they can help financially, sothere is not a family–individual conflict. Of course this is notalways true; look at Fatiha and her mother competing for clothing.Yet there is usually agreement on family goals.

Additionally, parents and teens do not take passing conflictstoo seriously, so there are few lasting hard feelings. And finally,when adolescents suspect their parents will disagree with some-thing which does not seem too serious, they may just go aheadand do it. As Mohammed, a young man of eighteen who works ina trade said of his mother, “We always agree. Even if she sayssomething I don’t really agree with, I always tell her that whatshe says is right. Even if something isn’t there and she tells me so,I tell her it’s there. . . . For example, when I tell her I want to gosomewhere, and she tells me not to go, I say O.K.” This is relatedto respect, in not opposing parental views, and to less desire toprove one is autonomous and can do as one wishes.

SEX DIFFERENCES

One of the most important determinants of an adolescent’s life inZawiya is whether they are female or male. The sexes do differentkinds and amounts of work, have different degrees of freedom,and have different expectations and experiences in relationshipswith each other.

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Work and Freedom

We wondered how adolescents felt about their lives, and onequestion which provided some answers was “Did you ever wishyou had been born a boy (or girl—the opposite sex)?” The threemales and about half of the eleven females we asked wished theyhad been born males, suggesting a preference for the male role.

Differences in workload and freedom were important factorsin preferring the male role. Hayat is sixteen and has dropped outafter finishing primary school. She says she prefers to be a girl,but her reasons lead her to see advantages for boys too.

In my opinion, it’s better for me to be a girl…. Boys aren’tgood workers. They don’t do housework, or anything else.He comes in and orders you to get him lunch. You get himlunch, then he asks “Are my clothes washed?” You get himhis clothes. It’s like he runs you. This is why it’s better to bea boy…. [My brother] does nothing to help us…. He doesnothing besides coming home to eat and grabbing his stuffto go to school. However, for a mother a daughter is far bet-ter…. She arranges things in the house for her. She helps herand gives her a hand…. But this is not the case for the boy….A boy is free and responsible for his actions. He can go outat night, have fun with boys and bum around. Even if thegirl is better than the boy, she doesn’t enjoy complete free-dom as does the boy…. If I’m late, [my mother] says “Whyare you late? Why did you go to fetch water?” And shekeeps yelling and asking for an explanation…even if it’s justa little after sunset.

Boys often stay in school longer than girls, because they areexpected to get jobs to support their own families and help outtheir parents. Most girls are expected to marry, and not to needmuch beyond primary education (though this is changing). Beingin school usually means less housework, even for girls, and it pro-vides much freedom of movement.


Relationships

Most marriages in Zawiya are still arranged by parents, and dat-ing is seen as taboo, yet male-female relationships are one of themajor concerns of Zawiya teens over the age of fifteen. The readermay find this strange, expecting a Muslim society to segregate thesexes and veil females, thus preventing contacts. While ideallythere is very limited contact between unrelated people of theopposite sex (though buying vegetables is fine), this is far fromreality. Boys and girls attend school together, girls are freer to runerrands than their mothers were, and the town is larger so one iswatched somewhat less closely. No adolescent girls wore veils (assome of their mothers did); as a friend said, their interest in veil-ing would match American girls’ in wearing girdles.12 In thesechanged conditions, there are few rules to follow; this may be onereason for so much focus on relationships. Boys and girls do gettogether, and activities range from joking and talking to kissing,and sometimes to petting and intercourse, though girls are veryconcerned with preserving their virginity. Yet none of this isacceptable, so that any contact between the sexes has a sexualimplication: even talking is seen as leading to an intimate rela-tionship.

At fourteen and just out of primary school, Farida is young tobe interested in boys. Yet when I asked her “What’s important toyou these days?…. I want to know what you have on your mind,what preoccupies you most,” her response was clear.

What interests us13 is to see how girls meet boys, so that welearn too. We do want to start getting together with boys.However, if we do it now, we won’t know what to do…. Iwant to learn to hold a discussion, how to become shrewd….[My friend] watches girls from her own family and I frommy family, and we teach each other.

Farida says she’ll just watch, not ask questions, because hersister would be upset and say she was too young to have suchideas, which illustrates the social taboo, especially for girls. Boystoo are interested: a young man of eighteen said a major topic of

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conversation with his best friend was girls they liked.Amina was a young woman in her late twenties, whose age

(and some degree of self interest, though she was considered agood, respectable young woman) had given her a perspective onhow things have changed in Zawiya in just one generation. I men-tioned that parents would probably think it shameful if theirdaughter spoke to a boy.

Why is it shameful? Are her parents the ones who are goingto do it? She should talk to him. In the first place, how wouldthey know about it? They won’t…. If she wants to talk to him,she’ll just go to the well to bring water; are they going to fol-low her there? If she goes to the store and talks to him, arethey going to accompany her?…. Just talking and foolingaround is well-known in adolescence. There is nothing seri-ous in that, nothing…. Listen, Susan, there is absolutely nogirl on earth who would reach the age of thirty or twenty-four—the age of being asked for in marriage—without havingfelt the need at least to smile, talk, and laugh with a boy….Now it is right; in the past it wasn’t. It was shameful for a boyto talk to a girl. A boy would have one week to ask for a girl’shand, and marry her in ten or fifteen days.

Indeed, some young women and mothers described changingnorms, based on their observations that being seen in public andmeeting young men increased one’s chances of marriage. Embarka,a thirty-five-year-old mother, told how she had thrown stones atneighbor women because she was so embarrassed when they jokedabout her own marriage. Yet for her daughter of sixteen:

Talk to her about marriage, she won’t object. She’ll like it. The[neighborhood] girls say they’re late in getting married.. . . My cousin said “Look at the girls who move to town: theybring back a husband.” A girl near us brought back a man justyesterday. She just went to Meknes . . . to visit her aunt . . .and now she’s drawing up a marriage license. . . . [Mycousin—in her early twenties] argued that because she andher likes are just staying home, nobody cares about them. . . .She does not go out. . . . She says she is always at home,always in the same blouse, always with her head covered.“Girls go out, they wear modern clothes, and go away andbring men, and we don’t bring anything. That’s why.”14


Education has made contact between the sexes more possi-ble by providing a place to meet, and requiring walks to andfrom high school in the larger town during which they can talk.Even those not in school are affected, because schoolgirlsappearing in public make other girls less conspicuous than inthe past, so girls running errands have become very common.Sixteen-year-old Hurriya, a secondary student, describes the set-tings in which couples meet and contrasts educated and unedu-cated girls.

Generally, educated girls prefer educated boys. Theywould like to get involved with the idea of marriage; theywould like to finish their education together. And if theyare successful they get married. Uneducated girls alsofind—with God’s help—uneducated boys who spend timewith them, but after taking advantage of them, they dumpthem…. They know these girls won’t be adequate as theirwives, and the girls waste their future with them….[Educated girls] too are taken advantage of.

The ones who have a good life are educated girls. Forexample, they date a boy who has a motorcycle or some-thing, and he gives her a ride to school. They have fun andall that. As for the girl who is not educated, she too findsan excuse to go out. She tries to run an errand or bringwater or whatever: she finds tricks to meet her date.However, an educated girl has a lot of freedom. She can lieto her parents and say she’ll be out of school at 5:00 whileshe actually leaves at 4:00. She makes a date with herboyfriend, and goes to Kabar [the nearby town] to take awalk. . . . Uneducated girls are always fearful. Even if shejust stands with him here, she will be scared and will fearthat her brother may show up or that her mother may seeher.

Hurriya reveals another aspect of male-female relations:most girls want them to end in marriage, and most boys seethem as temporary. This is closely related to Moroccan values,in which a girl should be a virgin at marriage, but premaritalexperience is encouraged for a boy. Young women risk theirreputations by meeting with boys, because people suspect theworst. Yet they take this risk in the hope of marriage. Youngmen enjoy dating girls, but when it comes time for marriage,they, too, want a virgin, and a previous dating partner may nowbe considered “loose” even for kissing, and eliminated as a

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potential wife. Thus most couple relationships are very ambiva-lent: girls expect to be exploited, and boys distrust the girls forbeing the type to “go out.”

Amina has lived through such a relationship:

Around their mid-teens, girls will date boys and have fun, butonce they grow up and reach our age [late twenties], then thatboy will have married another girl or just abandoned the onehe dated. She will realize she was the victim of a disaster. Shewill have sacrificed herself…. It’s like when you have a lambyou have raised; you care for it, and one day it just dies for noreason. It is the same situation as when a boy likes you; hespeaks to you, he laughs with you, brings what you want—and some day later when he finds another girl, or when heimproves his status and becomes rich, he doesn’t care for youany more. You become like the lamb which died: a dead ani-mal. Even if you love him, you are out of his heart. He doesn’tthink about you or care about you.

At nineteen, Majda too worries about male-female relation-ships. When I asked if she wanted to get married, at first she saidyes, though not right away. But then she went on:

We see that nowadays marriage is not worth it…. Whenever Igo to the women’s center, I see wives fighting with their hus-bands…. I get all shaky when I see them.…. They fight in thestreet [in front of city hall, where they file their complaints]while people are gathered around them. I hate that; it’s whatdiscourages me, it makes me pull back. I don’t want to lookahead. I say to myself: “Look at those who got married first:they have achieved nothing. What will happen to me? Me,who doesn’t yet know what God has in store for me.”… Thereare some who do take marriage seriously. They concentrateon it; they reach some kind of understanding. They have kids,they have furniture, and they don’t use foul language in frontof strangers…. If they disagree, they keep it to themselves….Not like those who insult each other in public: that’s justcraziness. As the saying goes, “One rotten fish spoils thewhole saddlebag full; one single fish makes the whole thingstink.”… That’s what I said to myself: “Look at that one fight-ing with her husband—how can I get married after seeingthat?” That’s what pushed me to lose faith.

What do these vignettes show us about teens and their rela-


tionships in Zawiya? Although Zawiya’s norms are still that thereshould be little contact between the sexes before marriage, the real-ity is quite different. Yet you’ve seen that these contacts are uneasy.While both sexes expect problems with each other, they also haveromantic fantasies, fantasies which are fulfilled very briefly, if atall. Still, some young men do select a spouse after “dating” andhave their parents make marriage arrangements. However, parentshave veto power, both through the respect due them and becausethey finance the expensive wedding celebrations. A proper youngwoman cannot propose a possible husband, for it would indicateshe knew him already. But she has more opportunity to get toknow, and to accept or decline, the man her parents choose than inthe past.

FEMALE POWER

If you began reading this with the stereotype of Arab or Muslimwomen as silent and submissive, totally dominated by men, hope-fully you now have a different, more nuanced perspective. It’s truethat there are inequalities, that girls have more work and less free-dom of movement than boys, but this doesn’t mean they passivelyaccept whatever the society or their male relatives declare theyshould. Think of what you’ve just read about relationships with theopposite sex, which according to social norms should not occur. Atfourteen, Farida has a clear idea that she wants to talk to boys, andworked out a plan to do so. Amina feels strongly that she has aright to talk to boys, and Embarka and her cousin describe howimportant meeting them is in getting married. Hurriya’s discussionof the different freedoms and fears of girls attending school andthose who aren’t shows that both groups defy social norms, even ifuneducated girls are more frightened because they’re more likelyto be seen. It does seem unfair that girls take these risks becausethey are pursuing marriage, while boys are more concerned with agood time…but it isn’t any different from much of supposedlymore egalitarian American society through the 1950s.

While some authors feel that many American girls “lose theirvoices” in adolescence,15 that is, they lose the ability to say, or evenknow, what they want, I feel this is not true for these youngwomen in Morocco. They know what they want and pursue it.There are some situations in which a woman, adolescent or adult,

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is expected to defer to males and she usually does, and this is onereason for the view of Arab women as submissive. Yet lookingclosely, you see women taking actions and making decisions whichinfluence their lives, not turning this power over to others.16

A young mother in her early thirties gave a striking example ofa friend who had clearly taken control of her life, using an especial-ly daring method given social norms. We were discussing why alocal young woman was unmarried, although she was veryrespectable; I asked what a girl should do who really wanted tomarry.

You know why: it’s because she doesn’t talk. She’s too shy—she has to be talkative, to participate in this and that. She musthave fun, talk to boys…. She starts [by] talking to one, datinghim until a problem arises, either she gets pregnant or what-ever, and she does marry him, by force. She warns him eitherto marry her or to face justice [the state can force marriages insome cases]. And he marries her…. It happens a lot . . . forsome it works, for others it doesn’t. …I would say it does notwork for the majority. Afterward their marriage becomessour; they split.

BECOMING AN ADULT

One goal of our research was to study whether “adolescence” wasa life stage found everywhere, or perhaps an invention of westernpsychologists. We asked if there was a special term like “teenager”used locally. Educated people had learned about “adolescence” (as-sinn al-murahaqa) in school, but there was no common term for ado-lescent in the local dialect of Arabic. Indeed, when I was goingdoor to door explaining our research, I had to say we wanted tostudy “children who are not too young and not too old.” Yet therewere other terms related to this phase of life, with rshed and bleghreferring to physiological changes, and Taysh and khfif meaningirresponsible behavior, often expected of teens.17 Overall, however,there was no widely-used term like “teenager” in MoroccanArabic, showing that the concept of adolescence as a definite lifestage does not exist in all cultures. This makes sense in cultures in


which young people marry soon after they reach physiologicalmaturity. As more Moroccans delay marriage, we predict that astage of adolescence will be more widely recognized; it has certain-ly begun in upper class urban families.

We did find a locally used term which helped us understandMoroccan ideas about adolescence and when that period ended:‘aql. In the literary form of Arabic, ‘aql refers to reasonableness andintelligence; in the Moroccan Arabic spoken in Zawiya, it can meanmind, responsibility, thoughtfulness, or to remember. It is related toadolescence in that when people have fully developed their ‘aql,they are seen as mature people, not adolescents. We found “socialsense” to be a good translation of ‘aql; a person with ‘aql considersall the consequences of his or her actions and reacts in a sociallyresponsible and appropriate way. Someone without ‘aql would acton his or her own self interest, such as fighting with someone whenangry, without considering first the broader implications. Whenpeople have fully developed their ‘aql or social sense, they are nolonger seen as adolescents. In the past, marriage marked the end ofadolescence. Now, with marriage age for females close to that in theUnited States (about twenty-one in rural areas and twenty-four incities)18 and males marrying later, ‘aql serves to mark the end ofadolescence.

For example, my husband witnessed a fight between a youngman and a customer who would not pay the price requested. Theseller was near thirty, certainly old enough to have developed ‘aql.Yet his teenage male cousin, who witnessed the fight with my hus-band, was near tears with embarrassment and chagrin. Theyounger man was too young to intervene physically and knew hiscousin was too old to display such socially inappropriate behavior.Such an angry emotional response indicated a lack of ‘aql; heshould have been able to deal with the situation verbally. By fight-ing, he illustrated to the community that he did not yet have ‘aql:he was not a fully adult man.

I asked Mohammed, age eighteen, if he had changed in the lasttwo years. He had four years of primary school and now worked ina trade, and said he had changed. “Last year, you could say I wasyoung and didn’t have ‘aql. I had just started a job, and I was stilllearning. Now, I’ve learned a lot.” I asked why he felt he wasimmature before. “I didn’t used to go to work [regularly]…. Iwould just sit around…. I used to go around town…. [To] Kabar.I’d sit in places I like, for example a park, or go to someone’s house…or ride on a motorcycle, if there’s one handy.” He said he hoped

MOROCCO 19

to change even more and I asked how. “I shouldn’t do anythingthat’s not right. That’s all. For example, in front of my parents, Ishould be very respectful. I should not do any embarrassing things.…They shouldn’t hear anything bad about me, whether it happensin the street, at home, or at work.”

Young women also develop a sense of ‘aql as a mark of maturi-ty, and in fact people in Zawiya expect females to develop it beforemales. In an extreme case, one person said girls develop ‘aql by orin their teens, and males in their mid-twenties. This is partly relat-ed to girls’ helping around the house; they learn to act responsiblyvery young, so that five-year-olds watch younger siblings. Butfemales develop the full range of ‘aql as social sense in their teens,and probably younger than their brothers. This is because of familyexpectations of girls, and the more diverse social settings in whichmales must learn to function.

The importance of ‘aql in Moroccan culture, and the effortsadolescents make to develop it, are factors in the low amount ofconflict between adolescents and parents. Young people are taughtto try to understand all aspects of a situation, and to resolve prob-lems in more subtle ways than open conflict.

CONCLUSION

I have described several issues that are important for adolescents,and shown how they are dealt with in Morocco. An eighteen-year-old woman in high school answered one of my questions in a waythat includes all these issues. I had asked Aisha if she could giveme an example of a personal dilemma she faced, a time when shewas undecided about what to do.

There is a boy who wants to marry me but he is not working.But he wants to work. He told me he wants to marry me [afterhe gets a job]. Because he’s not working, I didn’t want to lethim see my mother and ask her for my hand. She will ask ifhe has a job, and he’ll say, “No.” So, I did not want him tocome to my house. He is after me to start meeting and “talk-ing,” but I refused. People will see me with him and say,“That girl is bad.” That’s why I refused to meet with him.Now I am facing a dilemma these days: Should I let him seemy mother and ask her, or should I tell him, “No,” because


my mother will say to him, “You are not working, so goaway.” I’m still undecided. I’ve thought a lot about this….

I thought it through and decided no, I should not let himask my mother. I told him, “Go find a job first. Then comeback.” He has been interested in me [following me] for fouryears. This is a long time. But he is not working…. He doesn’tgo to school…. He applied to go to Libya [to work], but hedidn’t succeed; they didn’t answer his application…. Hisfather is a butcher; he helps him sometimes…. Butchering isno good!… It’s dirty. But also because there isn’t a lot ofmoney in it…. He doesn’t like it. He is not comfortable with it.He needs a decent job…. He knows what he wants to do, buthe hasn’t told me. I can’t wait to spend time with him so thathe can tell me.

S: If you spend time with him, will people gossip?

They will. He wants me to start going with him first, thenhe’ll marry me. I refused…. If I decide to do what he wantsand he doesn’t marry me, he’ll only take advantage of me….That’s why I refused to let him ask my mother until he finds ajob…. I told him, “No.”… He said he’ll try to find a job firstand then tell my mother….

S: So you’ve made the right decision?

Yes…. Even if he asks her [now], this idea will not bear anyresult. I mean, nothing good will come out of it…. Becauseshe’ll tell him to go away…. She’ll say, “You are not serious.You don’t even have a job.”… He’ll feel ashamed of himself ifmy mother refuses him because he has no job. I advised himnot to go and face rejection that will make him feel bad. I toldhim he shouldn’t go. Seriously, he needs to find a job first. Ishe going to get married without money?. . .

He agrees. He says he’ll find a job… but when I saw him,he hadn’t found anything yet. I told him to stop following me.When I go to school or come home, he waits for me. When I’mhome he keeps walking by my house, only because of me. Hisfamily knows about this. His mother knows that he wantsme…. He told his family…. But then I noticed that his mothersuggested to him that he should find a job. But he told her,“No, I tried and was unsuccessful.” He refuses to work. Hetells them he will start working only after he marries me. But Itold him—I told his sister to tell him that he has to get a jobfirst. I did that so that his family won’t accuse me of keepinghim from working, or say that he bums around because of

MOROCCO 21

me…. The heart of the matter is that I want him to work. Notonly for me, but for his family as well. He is the eldest of hisbrothers and sisters…. I told him, “Work first, help your fami-ly, then get married.”… If he does [get a job], I do want him.

I noted that there is little overt conflict between parents andadolescents in Zawiya, even though they may disagree on thingsbecause of rapid social change. If Aisha lived in the United Stateswe wouldn’t be surprised if she fought with her mother, arguingthat she wanted to see the young man, even if they weren’t goingto marry.

Aisha handles the matter very differently for several reasons.Her society still values girls’ reputations, and they can be ruined ifa girl is often seen in public talking to boys. While many girls domeet boys, they try to “control the damage” by being discreet. Thisalso limits conflict with parents because they are not aware ofmany actions they might disapprove. American adolescents mightfeel this is dishonest, and they would both be honest and asserttheir right to autonomy or independence by openly defyingparental wishes. Moroccan society values interdependence, notautonomy, and Aisha’s methods allow her to keep her relationshipwith her mother intact, while not totally denying her own wishes.Aisha also shows respect for her mother in that she appears toagree with the mother’s [and society’s] ground rules, that sheshould not get into a serious relationship unless a young man has ajob. It is also respectful of Aisha not to openly see the young manbecause this would affect her whole family’s reputation; peoplewould say her mother couldn’t control her.

I also mentioned that Zawiya teens are very concerned withfemale-male relationships, even though they are still socially taboo.Aisha’s dilemma demonstrates this, and gives a flavor of whatsuch relationships are like. Notice that Aisha says she can hardlywait to see her friend to hear what job he wants, but that she’sdecided not to see him until he gets a job, or people will talk—she’squite aware of the social taboos. So one wonders how she knowsthat he doesn’t want to be a butcher, that he applied for a job inLibya but didn’t get one, that he’s told his family about her . . . ifthey don’t even talk. In fact, they must have spent a fair amount oftime together. The young man wants to speak to her mother so hecan have the right see her more openly, since they would beengaged, and perhaps to reserve her for himself; she was an intelli-gent and lovely young woman.


Aisha’s dilemma also shows the kind of control that youngwomen can have over their lives. The young man wanted to have acertain kind of relationship, but Aisha set her own terms. Shedecided it was not in her best interest to be seen with or engaged tosomeone without a job. She may have decided that this particularyoung man was risky because he had such a hard time findingwork. His father’s job of butcher is one of the better-paying localjobs, and he should have been able to work with his father or havethe resources to find another job if he really tried.19

Finally, the way Aisha handles this relationship demonstratesthat she has developed ‘aql. She uses her “social sense” to evaluatethe general consequences of her behavior; she doesn’t just act onwhat she wants to do at the moment. While she wants to spendtime with a young man, she does not talk to him openly becausethat would damage her reputation. She wants to marry him, butrealizes that her mother would not give permission (usually thefather is asked, but Aisha’s parents are divorced) unless he has ajob, and she herself knows that a jobless man is not a goodprospect. If her mother turns him down, Aisha says he’ll feelashamed, and that could well influence his feelings toward her;that’s another reason she advises him against asking now. An effectwhich she doesn’t mention is that his request would make it likelyfor her mother to suspect a relationship, and thus watch Aisha’smovements more closely, probably preventing the contacts theyhave now. And notice how Aisha told her suitor’s sister that heshould get a job first, so that his family won’t blame her for leadinghim astray. Instead she’s presented herself as someone who caresabout his whole family’s welfare; if she did marry him, this concernwith the family would stand her in good stead.

You can see that adolescents in Zawiya, Morocco, resembletheir American counterparts in some ways and are quite differentin others. Moroccans are concerned with education and jobs aspaths to a better life than that of their often uneducated parents,whose early lives were much different. They have conflicts withtheir parents, but they are less extreme and less common thanmuch writing on American adolescents suggests. Although datingis condemned in the town setting, Moroccan teens are very inter-ested in relationships with the opposite sex and pursue them to amuch greater degree than their parents could. The content of theserelationships appears quite different from much American experi-ence, but the goals are similar to the United States in the recent past

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and for some today: most boys want to “score,” and most girlswant to catch a husband. The sexes lead quite different lives inMorocco, with boys freer and focused on their studies, while girlsare more restricted and must do housework besides studying. Yetgirls are not silent or subservient: they assert their views andclaims, sometimes more clearly than their American counterparts.Finally, the value Moroccans place on respecting elders, familyinterdependence, and developing ‘aql or social sense helps youngpeople negotiate the teenage years quite gracefully.

NOTES

1. This chapter has a title very similar to a book my husband and Iwrote on the topic: Susan S. Davis and Douglas A. Davis,Adolescence in a Moroccan Town (New Brunswick, NJ: RutgersUniversity Press, 1989). I use “adolescents” here to indicate that Iwill focus on individuals and their typical concerns, while thebook covers the topic of adolescence more generally.

2. Morocco has gone from being predominantly rural to being nearlyequally divided between urban and rural by the late 1980s.

3. We found an average of six children per Zawiya family in 1982,but nearly all the adolescents we interviewed said they wantedtwo children, a boy and a girl.

4. For an example of a Zawiya grandparent who chose her own hus-band after running away twice, see Susan S. Davis, “ZahrahMuhammad, a Rural Woman of Morocco,” in Elizabeth WarnockFernea and Basima Qattan Bezirgan, eds., Middle Eastern MuslimWomen Speak (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1977), pp.201–217.

5. Under the French, there were few schools, so most parents did nothave the option of education. Only three of our sample of over onehundred parents had attended a western-style school.

6. Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York: WilliamMorrow, 1928).

7. The Ph.D. has become a book: Susan S. Davis, Patience and Power:Women’s Roles in a Moroccan Village (Rochester, VT: SchenkmanBooks, Inc., 1983).

8. The Project was directed by John and Beatrice Whiting and IrvenDeVore at Harvard and supported by the William T. Grant


Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health (No. MH14066–06, 07, 08). Researcher-couples were sought, so we couldgather anthropological and psychological data from both sexes.The other sites were an agricultural town in Romania, an Inuit vil-lage in the Canadian Arctic, an Australian Aboriginal community,a Muslim fishing village in Thailand, a Kikuyu-speaking town inKenya, and two Ijo sites in Nigeria. Books by Burbank (Australia),Condon (Arctic), Davis and Davis (Morocco), and Leis and Hollos(Nigeria) report the results.

9. Douglas A. Davis, “Formal Thought in a Moroccan Town,” in J.Valsiner, ed., Cultural Context and Child Development: Toward aCulture-Inclusive Developmental Psychology (Toronto: Hofgrefe andHuber, 1989).

10. By the 1990s parents and youth had begun to realize that educa-tion alone would not guarantee a good job, and some wereputting less energy and resources into study.

11. Ellipses (…) in a quotation indicate material skipped over.Comments in brackets [ ] are my own additions for clarification;names have been changed.

12. Kinza Schuyler, personal communication.

13. Farida uses the “royal” we, which several young people did at dif-ferent points. It may be to distance herself from this perhapsembarrassing topic.

14. This same young woman now has a job outside Zawiya and wearsmodern clothes; can a husband be far behind?

15. See Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1982); and Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan,Meeting at the Crossroads (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress, 1992). My current research focuses on understanding whyMoroccan girls and women keep their voices.

16. See Susan S. Davis, Patience and Power (Rochester, VT: SchenkmanBooks, Inc., 1983) for examples concerning older women.

17. See Susan S. Davis and Douglas A. Davis, Adolescence in aMoroccan Town (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,1989), pp. 46–59, for a more detailed discussion of these concepts.

18. Royaume du Maroc, La nuptualite feminine au Maroc: Variationsdans le temps et dans l’espace (Rabat: CERED, 1987), p. 8.

19. In fact, she later married a civil servant, a much more reliablesource of support.

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SUGGESTED READINGS

Beck, Lois, and Nikki Keddie, eds. Women in the Muslim World.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978. A classic collec-tion of thirty-three articles on Muslim women in different parts ofthe world.

Burbank, Victoria K. Aboriginal Adolescence: Maidenhood in an AustralianCommunity. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Condon, Richard G. Inuit Youth: Growth and Change in the CanadianArctic. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., and R. Larson. Being Adolescent: Conflict andGrowth, the Teenage Years. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Reportsactivities of American adolescents.

Davis, Susan S. Patience and Power: Women’s Roles in a Moroccan Village.Rochester, VT: Schenkman Books, Inc., 1983.

Davis, Susan S., and Douglas A. Davis. Adolescence in a Moroccan Town.New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Leis, Philip, and Marida Hollos. Betwixt and Between: Ijo Youth inNigeria. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a ModernMuslim Society. Revised ed. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UniversityPress, 1987. Describes the wider context of Moroccan gender rela-tions, including historical and religious antecedents, which influ-ence the adolescents in this chapter.

Youniss, J., and J. Smollar. Adolescent Relations with Mothers, Fathers, andFriends. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Presents infor-mation on American adolescents.


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