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Battling the Curse of Womanhood
in Moroccan Culture: Reading Zrizi’s Jomana
Mohammed Ezroura Mohamed 5 University
Rabat
A cursory reading of Hassan Zrizi‟s novella, Jomana (2006), offers the
reader plenty of statements from the text to support the view that womanhood
is portrayed as a curse that the women characters spend their lifetime
struggling against. The narrative traces the life-histories of a group of women
in battle to change their lot. Their project in life is an attempt to eradicate
their terrible condition by helping each female character rationalize her fate
and change her predicament. This project of liberation culminates
symbolically towards the end of the novel as the young woman Amani
performs a radical move by reaching university and militating in an
association for the defence of women‟s rights; hence seeking to change the
law to institute a just society. The following statements illustrate the
predicament faced by these women: “Destiny seemed to turn a cold shoulder
to [their] limitless efforts to better their lives” (Jomana, 49); “Oumnia had
found that women nearly always shared the same disastrous fate…”(50); and
“Facing the unavoidable injustice of an old-fashioned and wrongly made
world” (52). But to understand the significance of this existential condition of
the characters, and of Jomana in particular, one must look at the general
development of the story and the different entwined themes and philosophical
arguments presented by the narrator. From the start, I would prefer to
attribute the novel‟s consciousness and ideological positions to the narrator
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whose views are limited to the text as it is read, rather than attributing them to
the author whose ideological positions are not always fixed and which could
vary from novel to novel and from period to period.
Jomana, a Textual Reading
Jomana offers three levels of reading which could be ranked on a scale
of complexity. Whether the author is aware of these levels of reading or not is
not a question that should bother us, for this is the lesson of critical theory
where critical approaches are limitless as long as the text lives on and is read
by humans like us (or may be by cyborgs in the future!). First, a basic flat
simple factual textual reading; the kind of reading that first-year university
students would provide or prefer to handle. This reading focuses on the
setting of the novel, its characters, themes, and general structure. Second,
the novel invites a thematic cultural, psychoanalytic, and ideological reading
which would borrow its concepts from dominant theories and disciplines. And
third, the architectural narratological reading that would borrow also from
recent theory of narrative and novel writing and would look at a text as a
mechanical product, a result of a painful labor using specific materials of
construction techniques that the author exploits in building his fictional
universe – which remains in the end as a paper universe. Here the reader
would evoke the formalist and structuralist adventures.
This novella is 108 pages long and is divided into 8 short chapters
(unnumbered and untitled). The story, which is narrated by an omniscient
narrator, tells the life-stories of seven sisters from Marrakech, who lead a life
of pain, struggling for bare survival and for simple recognition as human
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3
beings. Their life histories crisscross each other and are told in the style of
Sheherazade‟s tales by their elder sister, Jomana. The setting is also
evocative of the mythical universe of the Arabian Nights. It is the world-
famous public Square in Marrakech, called Jamaa Lafna, where storytellers,
acrobats, snake-charmers, fortune tellers, food vendors, and wanderers from
different walks of life meet everyday to seek free entertainment, exhibit skills,
or sell some meager produce for basic survival. Although Jamaa Lafna is
topographically central to the city, it is paradoxically the universe of the
marginalized, the unwanted, and the homeless. It is like a junkyard of
humanity. Those who wander around aimlessly thread there like lost souls
hoping to find something to hold on to; either some little job, some
entertainment, or simply mere human contacts which symbolically would
grant them the status of being human. People flock to the Square also from
different parts of the country from outside Marrakech, seeking a better
alternate world, and often finding in this little universe, despite its simplicity
and marginalization, a universe of wonders and imagination.
Jomana, whose name is made up of the initial letters of her sisters‟
names (Jamila, Omnia, Maria, Assala, Nada, and Amani), narrates the story
of their existence, suffering, especially their ill-treatment at the hands of men.
All these women, like other female characters in the story, spend their time
struggling against a terrible curse, that of being a woman and being
connected with a man, a father, a husband, or a boss who is ignorant of their
human rights. Sometimes, this male counterpart is sick and, therefore, is too
heavy a burden on the woman to take care of. In the eyes of the community,
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4
she is morally obliged to care for him although this gesture is hardly
reciprocated. These men in the novel seem to have a single mission in life,
that is to oppress their womenfolk. The presence of these women even
carries mythical representational dimensions; they seem to carry the
symbolic burden of all the women of the land and the Muslim culture.
The story is also that of their mother, Lalla Malika, who is an ideal
woman who takes care of her daughters and of her dying husband Haj El
Kebir. She does her house-chores with all sense of commitment and pride.
Lalla Malika‟s daughters, all except Amani, go through failed marriages and
relationships, and survive by doing odd temporary jobs: Jamila is an
occasional worker in olive farms, Omnia is a fortune-teller, Maria is a carpet
weaver-designer, Assala is a shopkeeper, Nada sells flowers, and Amani
escapes marriage and devotes her life to the cause of ill-treated women. She
becomes a social activist who joins an association with the hope of changing
the condition of women in the country.
The male characters constitute a world opposite to that of the women.
The men are the negation of the women. The men make the women suffer
and cause them all the ills of the world. The men are mostly husbands,
fathers, and male bosses who act as oppressors of these women. They keep
the women behind walls and consider them inferior creatures whose role in
life is to breed children, cook food and stay at home. But the world of these
men is a negative universe, whereas the world of the women is a positive and
fertile one. The latter offers much hope for a better future. All the women
struggle to fulfill their dream of liberation. The men are doomed to ultimate
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total handicap and death – though they never get buried or forgotten in the
story. These men are just there, condemned to paralysis and a perpetual life
in suffering: they are like some sinners condemned to perpetual punishment
in a Dantean-like universe; they are neither dead no alive!
The setting of the novel is a cursed city called Marrakech, a city of
paradoxes where the ill-treatment of women is common practice. Though it is
protected by seven male saints (reference here is to Sab3atu Rijaal, the
Seven Saints buried in the medina), these saints do not seem to bother about
protecting the women of the city; though it is common practice that women
regularly pay visits to these saints and beg for their blessing. In Jomana, the
women inhabit the lowest social positions; being doomed to poverty, illiteracy,
and suffering. They lead Sisyphean lives. Another paradox is that the city of
Jomana is threatened with sterility although the majority of its inhabitants
(also the majority of the characters in the novel) are females. The men
cannot reproduce themselves. They cannot engender male heirs; they breed
mostly daughters. These daughters grow up, are courted, loved, and then
given away for marriage to men; but only to find themselves, shortly after,
imprisoned, tortured, rejected, and repudiated.
The reader is never told about the root-cause of this female condition; this
curse seems to have existed in the city since the beginning of history; like the
archetypal story of Adam and Eve. The causes of the curse are situated
outside history. The women are born to suffer; the men are born to torture
them. The men suffer too; they are hit with sickness. But even when these
men are sick or live in the margins, they maintain their power over the women
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(Haj Kabbour, Haj El Kebir, Si Fares, etc…). The women are under the moral
obligation to look after them. The men are never abandoned by the women.
This curse seems to affect the whole universe of the characters. Even
the weather helps perpetuate this condition through its harshness, it presents
symbolic meaning in this forsaken universe. Nature is harsh; nipping cold.
Winter seems to be perpetual. The time of the story does not go beyond
December. Time itself seems to stand still, like that famous painting “Time”
by Salvador Dali. We get storms of rain from time to time, but spring never
arrives. Winter is the season that dominates the atmosphere of the novel.
The wind lashes at these emaciated staggering bodies that hardly resemble
humans. Harsh nature has no pity on them. Darkness does not take much
time to envelop the place of Jamaa Lafna; then the people have to hurry
away to their homes, but only to find that these homes are starved, inhabited
by sick men, battered women, or abandoned lunatics. Jamaa Lafna, as a
desolate place, becomes ironically the place of refuge, a shelter that provides
some hope of acknowledgement of a possible full humanity (at least
symbolically). The narrator explains:
During the storm, chaos reigned. Darkness overwhelmed the whole city and people moved like ghosts….the whole city seemed to drown in a deep and dark abyss. People were shouting and wandering aimlessly… the world seemed to come to a halt. Even breathing stopped. Air was lacking… (Jomana, 97).
In the same vein, the desolate Square Jamaa Lafna is described as the
symbol of this cursed universe that may fall beyond redumption:
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The Square was dark. Faces could not be seen clearly in the dim light. Bodies were like shadows moving in a cave. This once lively part in the center of Marrakech seemed to toll the bell for a certain end. The hubbub of the day seemed to quieten. Storytellers, fortune-tellers, snake charmers, dancers, potato-boilers, juice makers… all went away. The place was empty, a hard shell of land, chilly and dry. The moon gaped widely at the Square, and its light cast shadows of moving bodies. There were homeless teenagers sleeping here and there on the thresholds of closed shops. At this time of night, Jamaa Lafna also became a home for the homeless, the drunk, the wanderer, the lost, the drop-out, the raped… In the Square, everyone could make the home he or she wanted or needed. The Square itself slept, to try and heal its daily injuries, and was quiet for a few hours, only to be wakened by the clinking of horses‟ hooves, a couchi, drawing a carriage and carrying people to a place where they were not wanted or to a work they could not find… . (26).
The moon resembles the eye of a helpless God watching over this
unprotected, desolate place. Paradoxically, the moon does not evoke fertility,
but sterility. It brings to mind classical images of Eliot‟s “waste land,”
Gatsby‟s “Valley of ashes,” overlooked by the billboard with huge moon-like
spectacles resembling a powerless god, and Godot‟s desolate scenes.
There is no sun in the Square to shed warmth and life. On page 88, the
narrator laments: “It was getting dark. The moon rose; the Square stopped
speaking. Strange shadows overcame the site. Ghost-like shadows were
moving to and fro. The dim light of that chilly winter got dimmer and dimmer
as the storm got stronger and stronger. The storm announced the
interruption of a dry winter. Suddenly, the sky darkened and the moon
disappeared…” The universe of the Square is structured by interruptions.
There are interruptions by the elements (nature, the cold, the storms, the
rain, darkness, etc…), or by human intervention (individuals intruding upon
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8
each other); as Jomana interrupts Si Hammou, or the foreman interrupting
the work of the women in an act of sexual harassment. There seems to be an
absence of a legislator or regulator looking after the order of things in the
Square or outside it. With the seeming absence of a God, there is the
absence of order. No presence of a policeman or a symbol of authority to
impose order and respect for human rights. With the absence of women‟s
rights, chaos seems to reign supreme, enhanced by the violence of nature
and its elements.
Under the watchful eye of the moon, the individuals in Jamaa Lafna in
the novel are unhappy human beings. They move like lost souls. Only words
grant them meaning; they must seek words, stories, tales of the past and the
present, tales of utopia, in an attempt to prove their existence, both as story-
tellers and patient listeners. No sooner had they fixed themselves to a story,
settled to a meaningful (truthful) narrative, than they are hit with interruptions.
The story will be continued another time, or another story will be started
another time, they are told by the story teller. Signification is postponed till the
following day. They are told to be patient till the following session to
complete the narrative; to complete the meaning of their existence by
listening to the remaining part of the story, to complete identity, to put
together the fragments of a human self. The characters live perpetual
fragmentation and incompleteness; so they are condemned to spending their
lifetime seeking completeness of being and harmony of existence. This wish
is hardly fulfilled. Hence the tragic dimension of the novel.
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
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Jomana is a novel with a clear bias; it is committed to the struggle of
women against men; and these women openly refuse to live the curse of
oppression and exploitation. Some of them have even developed a feminist
consciousness prematurely and without even having attended school long
enough to cultivate such a consciousness (especially, Lalla Malika, Jamila
and Assala). As the narrator says, “[g]irls were allowed to step out of their
father‟s house on only two occasions: for their wedding and for their funeral”
(p.21). The women are a commodity sold in transactions among males. The
houses they inhabit are prison-like. Jomana protests to Si Hammou about the
conditions of living that her father El Haj El Kbir had confined them to:
“Nobody, neither the seven daughters nor our mother, was allowed to step
out, to go to school, to have friends… we were not even allowed to look out
of the windows. Windows were thought to be the source of trouble; they
were thought to bring shame. Thick walls could do the job and we were like
corpses buried within high, thick, dark and grey walls…” (Jomana, 23)
Jamila is forced into a polygamous marriage with a man who is twenty
years older than her. And she is the third wife on top of it all (31). Her
wedding celebration resembles a funeral (30). Shockingly enough, she gets
divorced quickly after her wedding because she could not beget any children
(32). Maria is raped and loses her brains as a result (67). Nada‟s marriage
also turns her into a prisoner (92). She could free herself only by
relinquishing her ownership rights to her flower shop to her greedy husband.
Other crimes against women are reported to have taken place (95). Even
some women like Mama Ghoula participate in this practice of oppression and
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
10
exploitation of women. She helps in Maria‟s rape by Haj Kabbour (66). As a
result of this culture of oppression and exploitation, a feminist consciousness
develops among these women, culminating in Jomana‟s powerful symbolic
intervention to appropriate the Logos and the power of speech symbolized by
story telling from Si Hammou. This rise of feminist consciousness is
symbolized by Amani‟s strong personality and mobilization of women for their
cause. This consciousness is also nourished by the mother Lalla Malika, and
particularly their younger sister, Amani, who closes the novel. The latter
reaches university and militates in women‟s rights organizations with the aim
of changing the laws in favor of women‟s liberation. The state of oppression
that all these women suffer from is symbolized by the silence imposed on
them. Jomana breaks this silence on behalf of all the women. The narrator
explains:
She no longer wants to remain silent, to pass unseen. God gave her voice, the gift of speech. Now she has found that silence is the source of sickness… and all troubles! It is death. It is not her problem alone; it is ours as well! How long have we been silent? How long have we been paralyzed… He [Si Hammou] has kept us silent… Today, the woman has come to break this silence… (10).
However, although the seven saints of the city cannot change this
universe of injustice towards women, there is hope for a better future for
women. There prevails some kind of nemesis working on their behalf, a
retribution that befalls the men one by one as a kind of punishment. Haj
Kabbour gets paralyzed because he had raped Maria. Haj EL Kbir is
permanently sick in bed, and Si Fares is struck by madness; even Stitioua
who is more feminine than masculine is struck by madness for having
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
11
courted the she-devil Mama-Ghoula. The masculine world in Jomana is
doomed to perpetual sickness and stasis; this is a curse that cannot be
changed. The men try to appropriate everything feminine; both real and
symbolic. “The laws are made by and for men” the narrator says (102). The
men are driven by a will to control the women around them and to exploit
them; and the women fight back, driven by a mysterious force. Si Hammou,
the first male figure we encounter in the story and who symbolically looks
after the world of narration, history, and the logos, is a father figure who
does not allow the history of female oppression in the land to be narrated.
Jomana criticizes his bias and calls for a realist narration of history. She
literally pushes him outside the area of the logos and narration and starts
telling her story and the history of all the oppressed women in the land (10).
The majority of the men in the novel are representative of an old
patriarchal order. Their names are culturally loaded: they are Haj Kabbour,
Haj El Kbir, Haj Brahim, Si Fares. They all lack positivities, except Mr. Salim
and Dr. Said, the psychiatrist, who manages to cure Assala‟s husband from
his schizophrenia. Some of the men are portrayed as monsters: Jamila‟s
boss has “pig-like ears; he was so fat that he found it difficult to move
adequately and as he stared at her he seemed to devour her with his sly,
squinty and cunning eyes.” (29)
The male characters are three types: There is the traditional patriarchal
figure who ill-treats women (Haj El Kebir, Haj Kabbour, and Si Fares). Their
title of Haj is significant in the way they represent certain religious patriarchal
stereotypes in the Moroccan culture. This male category is also represented
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
12
by Si Hammou, the story-teller with whom Jomana wrestles (symbolically) to
take back the space of narration – the space of the logos – to re-instate
speech to female identity instead of silence as death, which has marked her
life until now. The second type of a male figure is a more positive one (who
appears towards the end of the novel) as a modern figure, who is educated
and is willing to help in the cause. This type is represented by Dr. Said and
Salim. The third type of the male figure is actually a victim, and he resembles
the female characters. He is a victim of the curse. He is also a victim of a
vengeful powerful female figure who takes revenge on men on behalf – so to
speak -- of the other women. This figure is represented by Stitou who goes
mad for having fallen in love with the hoof-footed Mama Ghoula (78-80), a
version of the mythical Aisha Qendisha.
Jomana as a Feminist Novel
Jomana is a feminist text par excellence and a critique of a particular
Islamic patriarchal order. As well, a number of cultural, historical, and
philosophical themes are weaved into the fabric of the novel. The Most
salient issue raised is that of women‟s rights in the Moroccan Muslim context.
There is a clear conflict between an old order and an emerging new one. The
old order is symbolized by the figures of Si Hammou, Haj Kabbour, Haj El
Kbir, and Mama Ghoula; whereas the new order is symbolized by Jomana,
her sisters, Dr. Said, and Salim.
For the female characters, there are three types: The innocent victims
(Jomana, her sisters, and her mother), the vengeful female (the Ogress
Mama Ghoula, who is a variation on the mythical figure of Aisha Qendisha),
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13
and the third type, blessing female saints (namely Tiwalin, who is
metamorphosed in the saintly river, “the tears of tiwallin”, p.86). As noted
earlier, the female characters, even when they perform nasty acts against
men, are always carriers of positive values: they are always motivated by
positive drives, especially the liberation of women from bondage and
exploitation. “I have decided to break with the past, with silence and with
falsehood,” Jomana tells her audience (p.17); a past that considered women
as a “commodity that could be returned to the owner even after forty years!”
(21). Such a dream could not be fulfilled without the education of these
women and the changing of the law.
Jomana invites an interesting reading of the text in light of the Oedipal
myth. The conflict between the father and the son (the narrator) about the
mother‟s ill-treatment is clearly declared from the beginning. This
consciousness is expressed with much power in the dedication in which the
narrator reveals his affection for the dead mother and admits to having
fulfilled a moral obligation (a mission) to tell the real stories of these women.
We read in the dedication:
To the sweetest woman I have ever known… I still remember your big everlasting smile even on your death-bed… I understood your worries, but I think I have managed to fulfil one of your wishes… Now I borrow your sweet voice to express the aches and pains you did not and could not overcome. Rest in peace (p.3).
Although the addressee is not named as the mother, the tone of the passage
indicates this deduction.
In a sense, the stories of these sisters and other women in the novel
could be read as simple repetitions of the painful experience of the lost
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14
mother. These repetitions serve the purpose of healing a psychological
wound, that of a primal loss, the loss of the mother. They also signify a
strong desire to reconnect with the mother through this gesture of doing
justice to the symbolic sisters of the mother. This is counterbalanced by a
rebellion against the father who has possessed and ill-treated the mother –
and maybe has indirectly caused her death. The father is unconsciously
made responsible for the suffering of the mother. Along the same line of
argument, nearly all the men in the story are also repetitions of the same
image-type of the unjust father. The men persecute, rape, or exploit their
women, and they seem to go unpunished.
The beginning of the novel as narrated by Si Hammou starts with the
story of three daughters and their rich father (an allusion to King Lear and his
three daughters); then he hesitates, and counts more daughters and stops at
six. Jomana takes over from him and narrates the story of seven daughters.
The novel closes also with reference to another set of seven women, this
time not connected through kinship. Their sisterhood is only symbolic; they
share in the life of ill-treatment and injustice they lead. Like Jomana‟s sisters,
these women‟s names also constitute the letters of the name Jomana: they
are Jmeaa, Omaima, Meriem, Asmaa, Nawal, and Amal (104). They are
seven.
Number seven takes up an emblematic significance. The reader keeps
wondering about this magic number that keeps recurring at different levels in
the novel. Here are some of the occurrences of this number: there are seven
sisters, seven seas, seven vegetables, and dragons with seven heads (38).
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
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Seven volunteers to save the sick king, with seven medallions. There are
seven women in the painting on the cover page, and the king‟s recovery
takes seven seasons (39). Maria starts work at seven a.m. and goes on until
seven p.m. (57). The magic blue carpet that Maria designs is completed in
seven nights (63). Seven candles are lit for seven nights at the shrine of the
female saint Tiwallin in the mountains (86). The pilgrims to this shrine would
spend seven days and seven nights to seek a proper cure. There are seven
gardens in Maria‟s dream (64), as there are seven saints guarding the city of
Marrakech, etc… The number seven is so widely used that it acquires
enigmatic significance.
May be the author might help us in deciphering this enigma, although
psychoanalysis takes away that possibility when it delves into the world of the
unconscious. Actually the number seven has wide universal mythological and
cosmological references in different civilizations. It was considered magical
by the Greeks. In Old Egyptian myths, the goddess Isis was guarded by
seven scorpions, the god Osiris‟s body was cut off into 14 pieces and each
seven sent to upper and lower Egypt. A legendary famine lasted seven years.
In monotheistic mythologies, the Creation of the university took seven days,
there are seven days in the week, seven deadly sins, and seven ages in the
life of man (see. http://towerweb.net/alt_lib/seven.shtml). However, with
reference to Jomana, we may deduce that the magic number seven seems to
grant the female characters a kind of blessing and empowerment (cf. the
myth of Seven Souls) that helps them combat the curse of traditional
womanhood that haunts their existence. As in mythology, the number seven
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
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creates a group of women who become powerful enough to defeat patriarchy
and win their freedom and autonomous existence. However, not unlike the
resolution of the Oedipus Complex, the philosophy of the group remains
lacking in radical action, and therefore liberation is never achieved in totality.
Indeed, the resolution of the oedipal complex in Jomana is not as violent
as it is described in its Greek origins. There are no sons to wage the battle!
There are only daughters; but they cannot fall in love with the Father figure!
The father in Jomana does not get killed; nor do any of the symbols of
patriarchy disappear. There are no Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester here. There
is no violent act committed by any of the women against the men who
oppress them. The women are meek and „effeminate‟. Their radicalism
remains quite symbolic. The women‟s actions are limited to words and the
act of narration. One wonders here about the extent to which the narrator (the
author) is unconsciously reconciliatory rather than desiring to eradicate
patriarchy completely. In fact, the surprise death of Lalla Malika (p. 98) who is
the most positive character in the story tends to defeat this anti-patriarchy
and feminist project. The reasons for deciding to kill this character in the end
and after all the success stories of the seven daughters remains a mystery. It
seems that the author wanted to grant her a mythical figuration, a martyr
figure, who has sacrificed herself for the sake of the female race. But there
is no textual or plot necessity for such an architectural move. The ending
remains problematic in the way it defeats the original feminist project;
especially when the death of the mother leads to the loss of Jomana‟s voice
(a symbolic castration and an abortion of a new identity project), thereby,
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
17
leading to the silencing of Jomana. This move allows for the return of the
father figure, Si Hammou, to his symbolic post – although we are told that he
has come back with a new vision and more realism. His metamorphosis has
also happened in the margins of the story.
Thus the Oedipal Complex in Jomana remains unfulfilled in its totality.
Neither the male narrator nor the heroine (Jomana), who plays the oedipal
figure, gathers enough courage to get rid of the father figure in order to
avenge the mother and bring justice to the Square and the City. The father is
made to suffer only physical loss, not death. For example, Si Hammou
suffers the loss of his position as the master of the logos in the Square, but
he is re-instated at the end of the story. Haj El Kbir who is crippled for life
weeps at the death of Lalla Malika, but it is she who dies not him. For Assala,
Si Fares is cured after his downfall resulting from having cheated on her and
leaving her for another woman who turned out to be the wrong one – Mama
Ghoula.
The implications of this failed oedipal resolution is that the feminist
project in Jomana remains limited in vision. It remains unconsciously
diminished by a strong patriarchal undercurrent. The return of Si Hammou at
the end and Jomana‟s loss of voice and the death of Lalla Malika (symbol of
female sacrifice) is a defeatist project and might indicate a view of the
Moroccan feminist project as a whole; i.e., being not radical enough to
propose a radical solution to the dominance of patriarchy and masculinity.
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
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The Other Jamaa Lafna Square
Could we talk about “the Unsaid” of Jomana? One would wonder about
what is left out from this fantastic universe of Jamaa Lafna. The narrator
selects various images and representations of the culture of Jamaa Lafna,
but he neglects many other figures that those familiar with the history of the
Square would recall. Some striking scenes that one would remember from
the 70s and 80s, the time before food vendors, large cinema screens, and
stars like Nancy Ajram invaded the Square. One would remember the
Amazigh banjo singers, the Bedouin guenbri players, and the Gnawa bands.
Their imbrications in the narrative would have enriched the cultural coloring of
the novel. One would also recall famous figures of Jamaa Lafna, such as the
man with the pigeons who would tell stories of Devils and strange beings he
had encountered during his travels across the lands of Yajooj wa Majooj.
Also, the man with the white donkey who had trained his animal so well that
he could speak to it and make it perform, sleep and fake dying. At a certain
time, a large section of the Square was taken up by second hand bookstalls.
This activity has disappeared totally now. What is its significance? The larger
space has been taken up by food vendors catering to tourists (local and
international). Has the voice chased away the written word, as it were; a
return of an old order? The novel undoubtedly offers some historical
elements in the life of the Square, and a mixing of realism and fantastic
universes does not automatically produce corrupt art. Other scenes come to
mind, such as the behavior of the crowds: among the evening crowds, there
are usually weirdoes, veiled women recently arrived from remote villages in
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
19
the mountains or the countryside, all gaping at story tellers. There are
pickpockets, swindlers, sexual perverts, and foreigners trying to capture this
whole alien universe with their cameras. Then there are those who watch the
Square from the roof of a high rise, the Café CTM or Café de France.
Certainly, the historical time of the story is the time before Nancy Ajram
arrives in the Square and before huge cinema screens get pitched at the
heart of Jamaa Lafna. But the time was also a time of turmoil in schools,
lycées and universities not only in Marrakech but all around the Country.
There was a power struggle between the State and an emerging civil society.
Has the novel chosen to focus only on the case of women, a soft topic in
comparison with hotter issues? Let us listen to Abdallah Laaroui, in his
Khawatir AssabaaH (Morning Thoughts), talking about Jamaa Lafna of 1973:
In Jamaa Lafna, a story-steller shouts through a microphone: You all say that this Kuran is worth nothing, and I am telling you that it is everything. With it, Mohammed made the world under his feet. Then he would furnish his speech with French and often English expressions. This story teller is the symbol of the State and a large number of intellectuals, not only in the content of his words but also in his style and the way he would convey his ideas to the public…. (Khawatir AssabaaH, vol. I, p.193; trans. mine)
Could we read Jomana in light of Laaroui‟s statement? Does Jomana
represent the way late 20th.century Moroccan feminists related to their world,
culture, and politics? Along this line of reasoning, one would note that in
Jomana, there is a striking absence of mosques, of police stations, and the
symbols of the State. Is this a result of an unconscious fear or a search for a
utopian world, seeking harmony? The literature of memory has well
documented the powerful presence of the repressive State apparatus at the
time.
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
20
The reading of the novel also invites a question about race in the novel.
Whiteness as an ethnic characteristic is very much privileged among the
women of the novel. For instance, Maria is “blond” (56). Jomana is described
as being like the moon: “she was tall, slim, with blond hair and her face was
as round as the moon...” (21). The saint woman Tiwallin has blue eyes,
which is the color of the sacred water that cures the sick (86). She has a
white face (87). Saintliness of women, as an ideal figure in this context, is
attributed to a white woman with blue eyes, not to a female version of Moulay
Bouazza (a well-known black Amazigh Saint). “Tiwallin‟s tears… The
luckiest… those who have the chance to see her in their dreams talk
endlessly about her rare beauty, her big-round beautiful eyes, her long,
smooth black hair, her round white face, her smile, her delicate movement.
She was a lovely creature” (87). This is a far cry from the celebration of the
beauty of black dolls (cf. Anta Diop, “Poupées Noires”?) or Senghor‟s
celebration of negritude. If we compare these portraits of women in the novel
to the oil painting (by Bruneau de Jarney) on the cover page of the novel, we
note that the latter is more race-conscious; there is a black woman in the
background whose features are totally blurred, as she seems to be the slave
among white women. They all seem to be stereotypes of the Moorish/oriental
harem quite common among European painters of the 19th. century. This
question of race brings to mind those third world writers (like Chinua Achebe,
Ngugi Wa Thiong‟o, and Tayeb Salih) who have been writing against a
Western trend of idealizing whiteness, etc…
Ezroura Jomana: Curse of Womanhood
21
We cannot offer a reading of Jomana without referring to the triumph of
technique: the narrative is highly conscious of magical realism, of textual
architecture, of myths, and classical texts, such as King Lear and the
betrayal of daughters, the Arabian Nights and Shahrazade's night stories,
Andalusian literary figures such as Wallada, and other Arabic figures like Ibn
Battouta, 'Antara, and Sindbad.
To conclude, and to evoke Roland Barthes here, the multi-layered reading
of a text is only a sign of its richness and the great pleasure it grants the reader;
one of the best yardstick of an author’s success. (Rabat, 2009)