Morocco is a man’s country.

During my recent exchange to Morocco with the American Moroccan International Exchange program, this was the first thing that I learned. I spent three weeks with my host sister, Mariam Amrani, and her family in the town of Chefchaouen in northern Morocco. However, the presence of men was obvious to me from the beginning, and I was something perpetually aware of.

Harker with her host family in Morocco

Harker with her host family in Morocco.

Walking down a street, a young woman is always watched. With extremely curious eyes (if not hostile to some), the men watch a woman from the cafes, sipping mint tea or coffee. These young women are unmarried, and walk without the traditional clothing of a married woman. Most are in western gear and do not cover their heads.

As a foreign young woman, I was especially subjugated to stares. I was stared at in every public place I visited. A few of the funnier pick-up lines include “let me massage you, my beautiful, beautiful flower,” or “come here my sweet pastry,” or my personal favorite, “I have a big dick”. After a few days, even the blatantly obvious stares, whispers, and shouts stopped bothering me. However, one incident managed to shake me:

My sister, her friend, and another American were walking with me around town one night at 10:00 P.M. (the town is still active until midnight) when my sister wanted to take me to a café across town. Heading that direction, I saw a silver car and the two young men trailing us. It would pull by, park ahead, then pull forward again after we passed. It did this four or five times until we took off in a different direction, toward the less-crowded parts of town. I was relieved until the car pulled after us. The young men spoke Arabic to my sister but she ignored them (like any uninterested woman would). I asked her what they said, and she responded “hello, you are very beautiful girls please come with us”. Although the area still had people, you can say at the least that I was relieved when they disappeared. We continued to take back roads where less people were passing until we were alone. It was then that I saw headlights and turned around to see a silver car with two familiar young men. I told Mariam that we should find a more crowded area, but she told me we were close. I remember making a right turn and halfway down realizing that it was a dead end with no streetlights and to my growing horror, a silver car had turned in to the alley.

I admit, I was in tears by then. Here I was, a young woman that didn’t speak the native language in a foreign country with two smiling young men in a dark alleyway at ten o’clock at night. Not a good combination. We hid ourselves in the front porch of the nearest house, until they assumed that we had entered our own home and left.

What was even more frightening was the response my sisters had. She was shocked that I was in tears—that I was scared. My sister kept repeating, “They cannot do anything. Men are forbidden. If men do something, they are killed. They never do anything. Our religion protects us”. In vain I tried to explain my feelings, but she never understood. In my three weeks in Morocco, that was the only moment I regretted leaving home. I still wish I had tried harder to explain.

On another night, I remember talking about women and their role in society with my host father between midnight and three. He told me that by protecting his women, he is respecting them. In the mosques, men pray in the main area while the women are in a secluded section raised above the ground. By praying below them, he told me, he is acknowledging that men are below them.

His words confused me over the next few days. How could they be true when Mariam referred to a husband and wife as a “man and his woman”? What about when she ran to me crying that her father had taken her younger brother’s word above her own, and when we had to leave the main areas to talk to her male friends? Or when Mariam’s father saw her friend talking to a boy at the beach and promptly told the friend to “get the fuck out of my house, you bitch”?

Upon reflection, I’m not entirely disagreeing with my host father. I understand how his ideas make sense. He protects his child from harm by shielding her from the world. His extreme love for his family prompts him to do this. Yet in modern thought and times, he hurts more than he protects.

By being so shielded, Mariam was ignorant of everything that occurs in our world. She didn’t know about Darfur or Uganda, she didn’t know about Korea, she didn’t realize the world was moving around her. I love her, I really do, but she was ignorant of the realities of life. All the Moroccan girls I met were, dare I say, immature. I don’t blame them—the fact is, they don’t need to be. They don’t need to have jobs, they don’t need to know what is happening worldly, some don’t need to go to the university. But it still pained me to see how unaware and how oblivious some of my friends were.

Now, I’m not writing this to tell you about the low points of my trip and the creepy experiences I had with Moroccan men. I’m just saying that going from Sammamish to a small town in the mountains of Morocco, the differences between how women are treated was acutely sharp. However, most men I met were kind, respectful and funny. Our male Moroccan chaperones were hilarious and I fondly called all of them amu (uncle). My younger brother was full of laughter—try communicating when combined we know five languages, but have no overlap in vocabulary. The friends of Mariam that I met (without her father’s knowledge, of course) were curious about America, gracious and kind.

Morocco is a beautiful country. It is enchanting and relaxing, full of smiling people that are eager to teach you their culture. It is an exotic place, full of cinnamon, mint, lamb and warm bread. The people are kind and curious, and history is seeped deep into the bones of the people. I loved it—and I truly hope someday to return.

However, the position of women in this Islamic country was below what I desired to see. Mariam’s family was worldly, wealthy and liberal. What would life have been like with a more conservative family? What would life have been like in a village, with a poorer family and a less-educated father? Who knows what time will bring to the woman’s movement in Morocco, but I hope the coming years will bring a further introduction and acceptance of modern thought.