The Marrakech souks. Where they sell lamps and carpets, hashish and sex.
Yesterday walking through the souks with my friend we took a wrong turn, and immediately there was a kid, maybe fourteen, asking where we were going, telling us how to get to the square. Asking what we wanted.
“Square? Restaurant? Tannery? Carpet?”
And, as we walked off, ignoring him…
“Sex?”
I threw the British two-finger salute over my shoulder, and we walked on. But his litany of questions stayed with me. Square, restaurant, tannery, carpet, sex. The things that they think that a tourist might be seeking. The impression that we’re all both shopaholics and whores. And there are tourist women who come here, spend a fortune, meet a boytoy for a few days, and leave. It does happen. So they’re not entirely wrong. How do they differentiate between those of us who are here to explore the culture and those of us who are here to exploit and be exploited by the men? They really can’t. They could look at how much we’re covered, but it’s not a hard and fast rule that more covered means more conservative, even among the women here. They could assume that we’re all virtuous until proven otherwise, but that goes completely against the culture here and so would never actually happen.
Some of my expat friends have begun referring to Western women as belonging to a “third sex.” We don’t follow the traditional rules for women here, but we’re also clearly not men. So people don’t really know what to do with us. They (and by “they” I mean men in general who work with tourists) try to laugh and joke and have camaraderie as they would with other men, but there’s almost always something greedy under the surface, whether for money or for sex, and often for both. There’s almost an assumption in some places that a financial transaction might lead to a sexual one. The other day I bought a small painting for an inflated price, and the shopkeeper offered to give me a massage and wanted to give me a kiss. And while I told him that that was Not Okay, I got the impression that there had been other women in the same situation who had said that it was okay. And with such precedents, it’s almost understandable that there would be assumptions. But it’s still an irritating situation. And I have yet to find a solution that actually works.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The God of Small Things (Retroactive Post)
The God of Small Things. The God of Loss. The ones who make and break the Love Laws. The things I think about after reading this book.
How the rules of society determine who is able and allowed to love whom. How the desire to fix these ideas in stone creates pain for all transgressors who are not truly transgressors, who are simply the forerunners of those things that are still taboo but which will someday (inshallah soon) be accepted. Caste and Race and Family Ties. The established network of each.
In some ways I too transgress these laws. I love a woman, and an androgynous one at that. It’s not so bad these days as it was in the past. I’m quite happy that I didn’t live in the 1950s, when I would probably have been forced or felt pressured by society to marry some nice decent chap and had 2.5 kids and would have probably never even acknowledged to myself that women are more beautiful to my eyes than men.
On the other hand, my current life presents its own set of problems. I’m a lesbian living in Morocco. My girlfriend is afraid to come visit because she thinks that we’ll get lynched. I think we’d be alright, but nothing is certain, no matter what country we’re in. And given that she comes from an activist background and has seen all the bad things that can potentially happen, I have to respect her fears.
One thing that struck me in the book is how characters who seem on the surface to be very minor actually wield great power. Baby Kochamma seems like just a petty old biddy, and indeed that’s exactly what she is. But she manipulates the stories that people hear and that they believe to dramatically alter the outcome of events. But for her manipulations, Velutha might have lived longer and died differently. Ammu would have survived longer as well. The twins would have grown up together and not gone mostly mad. All these lives that could have gone on happily and indefinitely were ended or altered irreparably. By someone who appeared only to play a peripheral part.
I wonder, in my life, if there are people in the background that I’m not aware of, people who pull strings to manipulate thoughts as she did. I shudder to think of it. I wonder, if I continue to live in countries that are more traditional, what will happen if I flout custom to too great a degree. I want to tear down all the walls and barriers that exist, but doing so would probably bring all of them down onto my own head. So I’ll tread cautiously. And I’ll pray to the Gods of Things Small and Large to keep me safe as I walk the tightrope of customs, cultures, and beliefs.
2 July 2008
How the rules of society determine who is able and allowed to love whom. How the desire to fix these ideas in stone creates pain for all transgressors who are not truly transgressors, who are simply the forerunners of those things that are still taboo but which will someday (inshallah soon) be accepted. Caste and Race and Family Ties. The established network of each.
In some ways I too transgress these laws. I love a woman, and an androgynous one at that. It’s not so bad these days as it was in the past. I’m quite happy that I didn’t live in the 1950s, when I would probably have been forced or felt pressured by society to marry some nice decent chap and had 2.5 kids and would have probably never even acknowledged to myself that women are more beautiful to my eyes than men.
On the other hand, my current life presents its own set of problems. I’m a lesbian living in Morocco. My girlfriend is afraid to come visit because she thinks that we’ll get lynched. I think we’d be alright, but nothing is certain, no matter what country we’re in. And given that she comes from an activist background and has seen all the bad things that can potentially happen, I have to respect her fears.
One thing that struck me in the book is how characters who seem on the surface to be very minor actually wield great power. Baby Kochamma seems like just a petty old biddy, and indeed that’s exactly what she is. But she manipulates the stories that people hear and that they believe to dramatically alter the outcome of events. But for her manipulations, Velutha might have lived longer and died differently. Ammu would have survived longer as well. The twins would have grown up together and not gone mostly mad. All these lives that could have gone on happily and indefinitely were ended or altered irreparably. By someone who appeared only to play a peripheral part.
I wonder, in my life, if there are people in the background that I’m not aware of, people who pull strings to manipulate thoughts as she did. I shudder to think of it. I wonder, if I continue to live in countries that are more traditional, what will happen if I flout custom to too great a degree. I want to tear down all the walls and barriers that exist, but doing so would probably bring all of them down onto my own head. So I’ll tread cautiously. And I’ll pray to the Gods of Things Small and Large to keep me safe as I walk the tightrope of customs, cultures, and beliefs.
2 July 2008
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