what is the word?

Not all Words count.

There are words on every possible surface. Newspapers. Websites. Joumua speeches. Words that come right out of speakers of radios and televisions. Words from podcasts and words from café places. Clouds of disturbing words and streams of verbiage and all the possible pitches tones.

Hearing all the words of all kinds all the time is a really hard thing to do. Words that you agree with and those you don’t. the creation of words. The industry of words. Oh my … words at school. in every single corner. No one can escape all these floods of verbiage coming right into your ears from every where. And people say “ they should not say it like that” “why would any one say that” “ willi hshuma.. ma khassoush igul hakak” ( shame, he should not say that).

Sick: a wordly self-description of an acoustic illness.. or just tired of reading about political nonsense.

All the above and bellow is added to the big pile of verbiage recreation.

We are spending centuries on the study of these things. We created grammar and linguistics to make sure our words are well studied. We are creating every minute thousands of descriptions and illustrations. We are the rational ones. We discard other peoples words when they are different. We call that "foreign languages" thought we created declarations of cultural and linguistic rights of indigenous peoples. We like to hear them singing their own words and they all say staff. things we never understand.

We created English that millions of people now have to study to find a seat on the train of development and civility. French. German. that's it. We created the ability to speak for speakers and adapted sign language to fir images of “normal” verbiage.. the one with sounds. We abused of the 90 of non verbal indicators to our own semantics. We know how it all works: no verb no life. If you do not speak the right way, you do not deserve to be.

Speak. Say. Sound. Hint. Splash. Vomit. Write. Spell. Admit. Surrender. Say yes. Forget. Buy. Pay. Go. Come back. Buy. Pay. Go. Next. Please. Buy. Pay. Go. Forget. Buy again. do not watch how many people we kill. Just buy. Staff. things. Speak. Don’t speak. We don’t care. Shut up.

Shut up: a violent way of stopping unwelcome sounds from fellow humans we know we would disagree with before really listen to them. that is shut shut up.

what if i don't.

Rissani... notes on prostitution

…it also means that the impression that we want to give to our “visitors” is that this is the cradle of the ruling dynasty. They are stepping in the house of the prophet. Or rather the house of his descendents the Alawite Shorafa of Tafilalet.

Recent social history of Rissani saw the rise of immigrants from neighboring areas. Ait Atta berbers , Arib, Nnwaji, Dwi Mnia and others. Most desert tribes people were forced to settle as part of a big strategy of “fixation" of berbers tribes, a continuation of the French colonial “pacification”.

Rissani was a Souk, and many Ksour (fortified, four tower villages, one main entrance).

Now there are only two small hotels in Rissani. There is no bar no “epicerie” for liquors or wine. There was a Bar in the 60s: Bar Lahbib in the Kasba. It closed for some reason. We do not know why !

The souk area has always been a meeting point and a place for all kinds of interactions. The only souk in morocco that meets three times a week is Souk Moulay Ali Cherif.

Behind the souk was one of the most active social institutions, rather never talked about. The “wra-ssouq” (behind the market place) also called “secteur”, “derb”, etc…. Houses for women in prostitution or sex workers: "leqhab","timegganin".

In the early 80s there were more than 400 sex workers in the area behind the souk and in the Kasbah. They serviced the military garrison that had a few hundred soldiers, since its creation by the French colonizers in 1916, and also served a wider male society of the surrounding areas.

In the 1950s all sex workers walked to the French garrison on Thursdays (!) for medical checking. Their headquarters were in the Kasbah, behind the Bureaux.

Stories, never published in books, talk loads about all the different women leaders of this trade and how they managed their business and forced unlimited access to patriarchal space: governors, military officers, Qayds, cheikhs, khalifas, merchants, shorafa,…

They were called “entertainers”, “munashita” in Darija and this went on their ID cards.

Visibility was important in a patriarchal society like Rissani.

Many women would hide behind doors. There were “good women” and “other” in the minds of many Sherifian families. Women in Prostitution were always “other”. They were not cast away all times. I mean, They were present in most social gatherings. They danced for local musicians in weddings and in national holidays. They were the women who practiced male space with a great deal of courage and bravery.

Hiden behind an “Izar” (cover) they walked the souks and contributed to the local economy and outdoors social life.

Sex workers, commonly called “lqehbat” had to disappear from pubic space early 1990s. a few houses remained and prostitution in Rissani had to move to more residential areas and neighborhoods. The famous “Seteur” closed and was totally evacuated. One house remained: Lehbariyya. And his was “patrona” from the area. all other “patronas” had to go. Who made the decision? and why? (open questions)

Rissani was a forced urban center.

It is not a real “urban” area. It escapes these kinds of nominations. Enigmatic to most people visitors. Strange and saphocating for its youth, rich for wrcheolgists and excavators. Cheap for national tourists, NOT safe anymore for woman in prostitution… it is an adventure to write about it…

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10 bad things about Morocco

I found this information here on a blog( diario de marrocos) tought it might interest some of us.

10 bad things about Morocco

1. Some people trying to sell you Haxixe ( Marijuana )
2. I’m still thinking on position 2 on this matter
3. Very poor people in isolated regions of the Atlas Mountains
4. “Guardians”, or, a bunch of guys that call themselves that way just to keep an eye on people’s vehicles
5. Some intolerance between Arabs and Amazigh, Amazigh and Arabs
6. Some junkies and some drunk guys with bad humour in major cities
7. All Moroccans think that if tourists travel to Morocco, then, Morocco is a better country than all the rest
8. Some shops ask 10 times more money that they should, so you have to negotiate and bargain things you want to buy
9. Some crazy truck drivers on the roads
10. There is no toilet paper in a normal bathroom and some stinky ones also ( expect hotels of course ) / Expect to bump into: “The Hole”, which is good since you don’t really have to touch anything