Tales of Benshasha
Created | Updated Dec 4, 2008
'Me now' is the order of the day for all and sundry
'Whâa Moi'
As might be imagined, door bells, electrical or otherwise, have never featured very high on the list of 'things necessary for the improvement of life'. If you want anybody, you simply shout, and if you are male, you don't even bother to go remotely near the house of whoever it is that you want. You simply yell 'Whâa [whoever-it-is]' from wherever you happen to be standing, or, in the Benshasha male's case, sitting or lying at the time.
This can make it hideously noisy during daylight hours as every mother yells for her small children whenever they stray out of her sight and everybody who wants anybody else also just yells for them. It is thus not at all uncommon to find two people yelling for each other, neither able to hear anything but their own voice over the ambient cacophony.
This can be a trifle irritating, especially when I find myself sandwiched between two of my nephews, each yelling for the other. Our little house is right next to Fatna's and in one wall there is a small window. If any of her children want anything at all, from a match to a four course meal, they just yell, 'Whâa Moi' at the top of their voices until the good lady gets up and goes to find out what it is that they want. They never yell 'what' it is that they want, they never come and 'ask' her for anything, they just yell 'Whâa Moi'.
As if this was not enough, anyone wanting Ibrahim or any of the other nephews just stands in the lane outside and yells, and, as this lane is also outside our house, we also get the full benefit of the request. My reaction to this intrusion was to yell back the Moroccan equivalent of 'eff-off' but Fatima said that I shouldn't do this as it was 'rude'. I tried to explain that where I came from, it was regarded as pretty inconsiderate, if not rude, to stand in the road outside someone's house and just yell and was, in any case, actually against the law in some shape or form. This was to no avail at all, that was the way things were done in Benshasha and I wouldn't change it. Well not quite.
I woke up one morning to find that Ibrahim had, at some point during the previous evening, removed the gas cylinder to his room to make 'chy'. Now Ibrahim does not get up exactly 'early' and likes his beauty sleep, so nobody could cook anything until he decided to get up. I had already been working for three hours and I wanted to have a cup of coffee so, against Fatima's advice, I asked Ibrahim for the gas cylinder to be returned to its rightful place in the kitchen.
Ibrahim did not take at all kindly to the manner in which I asked, especially as one of the things that I can do very well, is 'project my voice' and my 'request for the gas' was such that there was little likelihood of his needing any form of a laxative that morning.
Eventually, after Ibrahim had returned the gas and made a hasty visit to the khazi, I did get Fatima to relate to him that I didn't like the way he yelled at his mother any more than he liked the way I woke him up. For a few days at least, things were a little bit quieter. Even so, I don't for one minute believe that he really understood what I was getting at, and the chances are, that he just thought I was crazy and probably dangerous.
In this respect I just gave up trying to understand the rationale behind much of the behaviour. Inconsiderate just isn't the word for it, and, in some ways, they are by far the most self-centred and inconsiderate people that I have met anywhere in the world. One expects, in any Arab country, to find a totally different attitude with regard to the consideration and treatment of women but in the depths of rural Morocco, there is absolutely no consideration for anyone at all.
There was another, not 'incident'. At that time Soud was working part time as 'housemaid' for a rich Moroccan who kept a weekend booze-cum-knocking shop in Plage David. When he arrived on late Friday afternoons, after work and on his way for a weekend's fun-'n-games', he would stop his big Mercedes on the edge of the village and rest his elbow on the horn and wait until such time as Souad stopped whatever she was doing and went to attend to her cleaning duties.
This irked me just a little.
Well, it happened one Friday that the good gentleman stopped for his domestic when I was at work in my 'quarry', which happened to be but a few metres from the road where he had parked. It was also directly in line between the car and Souad's house.
He was – to say the least – a little startled to see a rather tall Englishman, emerge from out of the ground and walk slowly over to his car, carrying a crowbar and 12 lb sledgehammer. I placed the sledgehammer on the bonnet of his car, just in front of the windscreen, and rested the crowbar on the roof, immediately above where he was sitting. I then said, in my best Public-School English, 'If you ever do that again, you might regret it.'
The speed at which he drove off was remarkable, even for a Mercedes, and if there is a scratch on his car from the hastily removed implements, I blame him, rather than me.
The next I knew of it was a message from the other end of the village, saying that he was there, waiting for Souad and telling anyone who would listen that there was a completely insane Englishman running wild in the village. As this only elicited the response, 'Oh, you mean Ami Hamid', he left for Plage David more confused than ever.
However, he has never since stopped and hooted, not once, and neither the police nor the men-in-white-coats ever came to take me away, as was widely predicted.
'Me now' is the order of the day for all and sundry. When I was working – building our house – and anyone wanted anything at all, they would just yell for it and if I did not immediately stop whatever it was that I was doing and attend to them and their needs, I was the one who was in the wrong. I resented this attitude strongly and despite Fatima's entreaties took my own measures to make sure that it stopped.
One morning in the Summer I was again quarrying stone at this time. It was about 4.30 am, a time when it is cool enough for the work and also when everyone else is asleep. Normally this meant that I could use the wheelbarrow, shovel, crowbar and pick-axe without fear of upsetting Ibrahim or Ayanne.
However, one morning, for some reason, Najet decided that she would do her washing early, and for this she required the wheelbarrow to take all the family blankets to the 'laundry'. She came over to where I was working and just took the 'barrowette', without so much as a 'salam malaikoum', let alone the Moroccan equivalent of 'would you mind awfully if I use the wheelbarrow'.
I said nothing, watched her ample buttocks joggle into the distance and carried on with what I was doing until I had enough stones for the day.
About an hour later, Najet not having returned the wheelbarrow, I went to the washing place, at the other end of the village, and took it, just as she had taken it from me – without so much as a greeting or a word. I then loaded up the stones that I had dug out of my hole-in-the-ground and made several trips back to the house with it. Having done this, I stopped for a cup of coffee that Fatima had made me, leaving the barrowette outside and not saying anything about what had happened.
A few minutes later all hell broke loose as Najet stormed in, screaming with rage and yelling abuse at me. Fatima sat there, open-mouthed, as Najet was, generally, one of the less excitable women; and although her volume was turned up to full, her invective towards me gave no indication as to 'why'. After the rumpus had died down and Najet had repossessed the barrowette, Fatima asked me just what the hell had been going on, as if she suspected that I had tried to rape Najet.
I explained exactly what had happened and then asked Fatima quietly why there was any difference between what Najet had done and what I had done. The good lady was at a loss to come up with anything more plausible than that it was too hot to do the washing in the day, but said it in a way that implied that I was still wrong.
Total inconsideration is endemic and just about the most frustrating thing about trying to live sensibly in Benshasha. I could be discussing something important with Fatima and any member of the family would march in and demand instant and immediate attention. It made me incredibly angry but also made me realise why 'manners' and 'politeness' are so important in a civilised society. Here, there is absolutely no consideration for anybody other than yourself and, maybe, your immediate and closest relations. For the rest it's every man for himself and, I think, progress towards 'civilisation' is severely hampered by this attitude.
This is all the more strange when you take into account how much influence Islam and the mosque has on daily life. Here, the mosque teaches consideration and respect of others as one of the fundamental ethics of the religion. But, as I was discovering, Benshasha people can be very selective about which bits of the religion to take seriously.
